Review of Three Lectures on Complexity and Black Holes by Leonard Susskind

Abstract

The future prospects for anyone falling into a black hole are bleak. For one thing, there is no chance (according to our present state of knowledge) of ever getting out again. Worse, one is facing certain destruction when one meets the "singularity" (or its inconceivably dense physical manifestation, whatever that may be) inside. However, there is an "event horizon," the point of no return, separating the overly curious infalling astronaut from the doom he or she faces at the singularity. Suppose Alice the Astronaut wants to see what's behind the horizon (never mind the consequences). How much time would Alice have to look around and see what's happening, before reaching the end of her worldline? Conventional wisdom, until relatively recently, was that she would have some amount of time, perhaps hours. Passing the event horizon of a supermassive black hole would not seem like any kind of a milestone to the infalling individual; it is only an outside observer who would notice something out of the ordinary.