Black Holes and the Boundary of Meaning: A Relational Perspective

In standard physics, black holes raise profound puzzles about the nature of time, information, and the fabric of reality. Among these, the so-called "information paradox" looms large: if something falls into a black hole, is the quantum information that describes it lost forever? This challenges the core principles of quantum mechanics, which hold that information is preserved.

In the relational model of space and time, this paradox dissolves—not by solving it in the conventional sense, but by reframing what we mean by "information" itself.

Information as Meaning

From the relational perspective, time is not a neutral backdrop or a fixed axis but the dimension along which processes unfold. Reality is not an absolute structure of spacetime but a structure of meaning instantiated by observation. Information, in this framework, is not an objective feature of the system but the structure of meaning potential that can be actualised by a meaning maker.

When a clock approaches a black hole, its unfolding in time slows relative to observers at a distance—but not relative to itself. It continues to instantiate experience until spatial contraction near the singularity reaches a critical point. Inside the event horizon, time still unfolds for the clock. Meaning is still instantiated. But as it nears the centre, spatial intervals contract so extremely that no further distinctions can be drawn. Instantiation collapses not because time stops, but because space no longer provides the necessary differential structure to support meaning.

Thus, for a relational model, the event horizon is not merely a gravitational boundary; it is a boundary condition for the instantiation of meaning. What lies within is not "information lost" but uninstantiable potential—experience that cannot be made actual because no meaning-making system can sustain it beyond a certain spatial threshold.

Hawking Radiation as Edge Effect

How, then, should we understand Hawking radiation? In traditional physics, it's the product of quantum fluctuations near the event horizon, where one particle of a virtual pair escapes and the other is consumed by the black hole.

In the relational model, this too is reframed: Hawking radiation is not a recovery of lost information, but the last instantiable residue of meaning at the limit where instantiation becomes impossible. It marks the final shimmer of potential made actual at the threshold of the uninstantiable. To distant observers, it's the only interaction still possible with a region that no longer supports the emergence of meaning.

Conclusion

From the relational point of view, the black hole does not destroy information. It defines the edge beyond which meaning cannot arise. The relational model resolves the information paradox by transforming it: not into a question of whether information is preserved, but into a question of whether meaning can be instantiated. The answer is determined not by absolute laws but by the possibility of structured observation—and by the space and time relations that make it possible.