For over a century, gravity and black holes have occupied a central place in our understanding of the cosmos. Gravity is a fundamental force that shapes the structure of spacetime, while black holes are cosmic dead ends. This is at least that’s what we think. Black holes are regions so dense that nothing, not even light, can escape their gravitational grip. Traditional views suggest that once matter crosses the event horizon of a black hole, it is lost forever, merging into the singularity. A singularity is a point where physics as we know it breaks down. Time slows dramatically near this region, and our current theories cease to function reliably. But what if this view is incomplete? What if gravity is not a fundamental force, and black holes are not cosmic cul-de-sacs, but central processors in a vast cosmic computation? Can black holes compute?
The Puzzle of Unification
In the realm of modern physics, one of the biggest unresolved questions is the unification of gravity with the other fundamental forces. We have made substantial progress. At extremely high temperatures the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces merge into a single electroweak force. Scientists expect that strong nuclear force unify at even higher energies. However, gravity remains the outlier. General Relativity elegantly explains gravitational phenomena on cosmic scales. But it is incompatible with the quantum mechanics that governs subatomic particles. This disjunction has led physicists to explore alternative ideas that might bridge this gap.
Emergent Gravity: A Shift in Perspective
One such idea is Erik Verlinde’s theory of emergent gravity. This challenges the assumption that gravity is a fundamental interaction like electromagnetism or the nuclear forces. Instead, gravity may be an emergent phenomenon—similar to temperature—which arises from the statistical behavior of microscopic information. In thermodynamics, temperature is not a fundamental quantity; it emerges from the collective motion of molecules. In the same way, gravity could emerge from changes in entropy, or the information associated with the positions of matter.
According to Verlinde, forces can arise as systems seek higher entropy. When ice melts in a warm room, it’s not because of an invisible “melting force,” but because the system is naturally evolving toward a more probable, higher-entropy state. Similarly, gravity may be an entropic force. Mass curves spacetime because it changes the distribution of information in that region. And the resulting entropy gradient manifests as the force we perceive as gravity. The tendency to achieve higher entropy is what looks like “gravitational force” to us. This could even explain the effects currently attributed to dark matter. Verlinde suggests that what we interpret as dark matter may simply be an illusion caused by entropic responses in spacetime.
Spacetime as an Information Network
Pushing this idea further, some theories propose that spacetime itself emerges from quantum entanglement. In this view, the fabric of space is not continuous but composed of entangled bits of quantum information. These entanglement “threads” stitch the universe together. And disturbances in this informational structure—caused by mass and energy—alter the entanglement pattern. It produces what we experience as gravitational curvature.
This perspective implies a radical rethinking of reality. Instead of viewing spacetime as a passive stage upon which the universe plays out, it becomes an active, dynamic network of quantum information. Mass and energy don’t just exist in spacetime—they are part of the very processes that generate it.
Black Holes: Cosmic Information Processors
No object exemplifies the mysteries of gravity more profoundly than the black hole. Once thought to obliterate all information about the matter that falls into them, we now believe it to preserve that information in a highly scrambled form. Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein revolutionized our understanding by showing that black holes have entropy and temperature. And that their entropy is proportional to the surface area, not the volume, of the event horizon. This insight led to the holographic principle. This is the idea that a three-dimensional region of space can be fully described by data encoded on its two-dimensional boundary. The holographic principle, initially proposed to resolve the black hole information paradox, has evolved into another crazy idea. It suggests that the entire universe might function like a hologram. Where everything we experience in three dimensions is a projection from data encoded on a distant two-dimensional surface, such as the cosmological horizon.
Building on this, physicist Seth Lloyd proposed that the universe functions as a quantum computer, with black holes acting as its most powerful processors. Black holes could compute at the maximum rate laws of physics permits, processing and storing information in ways that preserve the fundamental principle of unitarity. Where information is never truly lost but transformed.
Cosmic Computation: Can Black holes compute?
Some theorists say, when black holes consume matter and emit Hawking radiation, they are not erasing information but gradually releasing it back into the universe in an encoded form. Far from being inert endpoints, black holes may be dynamic participants in cosmic computation, transforming the structure of the universe’s informational substrate.
Space, time, and matter could be emergent phenomena, byproducts of a deeper layer of quantum information.
This view echoes the computational interpretation of the universe, where the cosmos is not a machine made of gears and particles. It is a self-organizing system of data, where entanglement patterns dictate the structure of reality. In this sense, black holes act like central nodes in a vast informational network, storing, processing, and eventually releasing data that might influence future cosmic epochs.
Penrose’s Conformal Cyclic Cosmology
Another compelling theory that intersects with this vision is Roger Penrose’s Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC). Penrose suggests that the universe is not a one-time event but part of an infinite series of cycles, or “aeons.” Each aeon begins with a Big Bang and expands infinitely until all mass dissipates, leaving only black holes and radiation. Eventually, black holes evaporate through Hawking radiation, and the resulting universe becomes conformally rescaled—its infinitely large state compressed into a new Big Bang, starting the next aeon.
In CCC, black holes play a key transitional role. As the universe ages and black holes dominate, they may encode and transmit information via Hawking radiation into the next cosmic cycle. If information is truly conserved and not lost in the evaporation process, then each aeon could inherit data from its predecessor. This transforms black holes into cosmic messengers, bridging universes across time.
Furthermore, speculative ideas propose that quantum fluctuations in the vacuum of a dying universe could generate new universes or “baby universes.” If this is the case, the information released by black holes may influence the birth conditions of these new realms. In this way, black holes may shape not only the fate of our universe but also the blueprint of others.
Conclusion: Rethinking Reality
Pulling these ideas together, a compelling new view of reality begins to emerge:
Gravity may not be fundamental, but a product of information dynamics and entropic processes.
Spacetime could be a quantum information network, shaped by patterns of entanglement rather than existing as an immutable backdrop.
Black holes might be central computational hubs, storing, transforming, and transmitting information across cosmic cycles. Black holes can compute.
The universe itself may function as a quantum computer, evolving through logical transformations of encoded information.
This perspective reimagines black holes not as cosmic endpoints, but as the places where the universe thinks. They are nodes of intelligence in an information-driven cosmos. If reality is fundamentally informational, then understanding black holes could be the key not just to gravity or quantum mechanics, but to a deeper layer of truth that unites them both.
Sources:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-spacetime-really-made-of
https://aeon.co/essays/is-the-black-hole-at-our-galaxy-s-centre-a-quantum-computer