Into the Impossible With Brian Keating The Equation That Changed How Physicists Think About Reality | Juan Maldacena
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May 7, 2026 
Juan Maldacena, a leading theoretical physicist known for AdS/CFT, offers a tour of radical ideas linking wormholes and quantum entanglement. He explores what happens to information in black holes, how black hole physics helped explain cosmic structure, and whether science-fiction wormholes can exist. He also names the one deeper problem he thinks matters most for quantum gravity.
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Einstein Would Enjoy Modern Black Hole Discoveries
- Juan Maldacena imagines Einstein would be fascinated by black hole observations like gravitational waves and star orbits.
- He jokes Einstein might have disliked referees but would love black hole thermodynamics and entropy discoveries.
Black Hole Entropy Hints Information Is Preserved
- Throwing an object into a black hole increases its area and entropy, suggesting information isn't destroyed classically.
- Hawking radiation is thermal to leading order, so any information in outgoing radiation must be encoded subtly if unitarity holds.
Hawking Radiation Is Negligible For Real Astrophysical Black Holes
- Hawking radiation for astrophysical (stellar-mass and larger) black holes is undetectably tiny compared to the cosmic microwave background.
- Maldacena notes CMB and accreting matter swamp Hawking emission, making it practically irrelevant for known black holes.
