Black Holes Are as Fundamental as Electrons

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]Particles are characterized by just a few quantum numbers. Mhm. So, do you think black holes should appear on the particle spectrum? And then if not, then where does this analogy break down? It's a great question. I absolutely do think they should. I think black holes being an interesting terrain on which to understand quantum gravity or the information loss paradox is not just a coincidence. It's because there's something fundamental about black holes.

[00:00:24]They are somehow, I believe, part of the original ingredients of the universe.

[00:00:30]And um and I think exactly what you said is true, that I I know what what does it mean to be an electron?

[00:00:36]It means exactly its quantum numbers.

[00:00:38]It's charge, it's mass, it's spin, whatever list you want to add to that to make it an electron. And that's the only thing an electron is. It's not there it has no other detail than that. You cannot say, "Oh, the electron in my body is somehow different than the electron in an asteroid." Okay?

[00:00:57]They're interchangeable.

[00:00:59]And that interchangeability is what we expect of a fundamental particle.

[00:01:04]And it's very odd that black holes have that property as well. Now, they they can have a whole continuum of masses and spins and electric charges.

[00:01:15]So, that might seem a little different, but really the fact that every single black hole with a given set of numbers, charge, mass, spin, is indistinguishable by the definition of the event horizon. It has no features. It can have no hair, that's the statement, it can have no hair. No details about the interior of that black hole can be expressed except its charge, mass, and spin. And that makes them feel like fundamental particles. Um and so I think black holes were already telling us something about themselves even when we looked at pure relativity because that's a result from pure relativity that they are featureless. They're timeless and they're featureless. If I turn off quantum mechanics and Hawking radiation, I just think about general relativity. They do not age. They are utterly timeless in the same way an electron is utterly timeless. Now, they can get heavier, that's true. There are processes. But left to its own devices, there's no clock. There's no watching that thing and saying what's happening.

[00:02:14]How long has it been there? Or is it different than this one? This one was formed by a star and this one was formed by you know, crushing donkeys together.

[00:02:22]Like there's no way you can tell these details about it. Um and so I think that it was reasonable to suspect that in the early universe a primordial black hole would form or or or, you know, a spectrum of primordial black holes will form in the early universe. I think that's completely reasonable to expect that. That there stars a black hole is not a dead star. A dead star is just a way nature figured out how to make a black hole.

[00:02:46]>> [laughter] >> Um but there are other ways to make a black hole. Maybe a accelerator experiments, maybe particles crashing together naturally at high energies, maybe the Big Bang.