Why Black Holes Have No Interior | Leonard Susskind

Описание: Black holes are usually imagined as objects with a deep, hidden interior — a place where matter falls and disappears forever. This image is deeply ingrained in popular science. But modern theoretical physics suggests something far more surprising: black holes may not have an interior in the way we think.

In this video, we explore why physicists increasingly question the idea of a black hole interior. “No interior” does not mean nothing happens when something falls in. It means that the information describing that object is not stored inside the black hole as an internal structure.

Drawing on ideas associated with Leonard Susskind, this exploration focuses on how black hole physics forced a radical shift in our understanding of space, time, and information. The black hole information paradox revealed a contradiction: if information falls inside and disappears, the laws of quantum mechanics are violated.

The resolution points in an unexpected direction. Instead of information being stored inside a black hole, it appears to be encoded on its surface — the event horizon. From this perspective, the interior is not a fundamental part of reality. It is a derived description, not a physical place where information resides.

This leads to a profound conclusion: what we think of as the inside of a black hole may be an emergent concept, constructed from correlations and observations rather than a real internal space. The horizon becomes the true defining feature, while the interior fades from fundamental physics.

This video avoids equations and focuses on intuition. Through conceptual explanations, it shows why black holes challenge our deepest assumptions about space, depth, and what it means for something to be “inside” anything at all.

Understanding black holes in this way reshapes how we think about the universe itself. If black holes have no interior, then space may not be as real as it seems — and reality may be defined by surfaces, not volumes.