Question

If matter cannot be transformed into information, why do we say that information about matter is lost when we talk about black hole paradox?

Answer 1

3

down vote

You "know" wrong.

First and foremost, the m in        E=mc2 does not stand for matter, but for mass. Mass is a property of matter, and energy is a process of matter and also of radiation. It should be clear that you cannot convert some object or substance into one of its properties. Converting matter into energy would be like converting stone into solidity. What     E=mc2 says is that energy and mass are not independent properties. Especially there's not a conservation of mass independent of energy conservation, and thus massive particles ("matter" can be transformed into massless particles ("radiation", especially electromagnetic radiation, sometimes wrongly claimed to be "pure energy") provided this conversion does not violate another conservation law (e.g. an electron cannot decay into electromagnetic radiation because that would violate the conservation of charge; however an electron and a positron can annihilate into electromagnetic radiation, because that doesn't violate any conservation laws).

Now given that you're wrong about conversion of matter to energy, it will probably not be a big surprise to you that also a conversion of matter to information is not possible, and would not make sense.

Note that even if, as some people do, you consider information instead of matter to be the fundamental property of the universe, that doesn't change the fact that a conversion of matter to information does not make sense: In that case, the brick is already information, and therefore it still doesn't make sense to convert it into information.