- the theory behind Black Holes faces a 40 year-old debate known as the "black hole information paradox."

"What you may not know is that physicists have been arguing for 40 years about what happens to the information about the physical state of those objects once they fall in. Quantum mechanics says that this information cannot be destroyed, but general relativity says it must be – that’s why this argument is known as the information paradox."

- Mr. Hawking was speaking to a group of mostly lay-people at the Hawking Radiation Conference in Stockholm, in which he teased the idea that he may have another theory about black holes:

"The message of this lecture is that black holes ain't as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought."

"Things can get out of a black hole both on the outside and possibly come out in another universe," Hawking said.

If his theory proves true, Hawking will have solved a mystery that he and his colleagues have been debating since Hawking famously posited and proved, in 1974, that black holes emit radiation.

Among the physicists attending in Stockholm there is already one with doubt:

“I wouldn’t say the solution to the information paradox has been found because there are several competing ideas,” said Carlo Rovelli, physicist at the Aix-Marseille Universite in France, and an attendee, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “But Stephen being Stephen, everybody’s going to take it seriously.”

- The Journal also notes that Gerard 't Hooft of Utrecht University, winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in physics who was also at the conference, had presented a similar idea in 1996.

"I claim he is now where I was 20 years ago," he told the Journal. "If he announces this as a new idea, I won't be thrilled."

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0825/Can-Stephen-Hawking-end-a-40-year-debate-on-a-black-hole-mystery

Well, I guess we'll never know by direct observation whether to stuff that goes into a black hole winds up in another universe since it will be crushed to oblivion and be shat out the other end as cosmic dust. Perhaps one day we'll know enough about gravity to put a gravity protection shell around a probe and send it into a black hole to see what's going on. Of course we've got to get to a black hole to do that first.

i back up quantum mechanics its simple logic you can tear something apart and there will be always a piece left..

far as i know big name scientists dont even take hawking seriously for years and theres little to no chance that hawking will do something groundbreaking.

they take him very seriously, but not all he says.  they know he is one of the brightest minds in the world, maybe the brightest. but he is thinking too much with too little data, thats very dangerously

Who hasn't thought about that idea if they've thought about black holes at all? That said, I imagine Stephen Hawking would be one of the people that could solve this.

One of the other one could surprise you.

who talks about iq tests? that girl could do great things, or study gender studies. hawkings sat on the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics, he was the pope of physics and math. you dont get the job of newton for a high score in an IQ test.

If that girl is reading this you just made her cry.