At a public lecture in Stockholm, world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking presented a theory about black holes that, if proved, has the potential to change the way we look at the time, space and the universe itself.
According to the current understanding on the subject, the star which collapses to make a black hole, loses all and any information and matter, presumably in the center of the black hole itself. This is the information paradox. But matter, and by relation, information, cannot be lost if our current understanding of the universe is correct. So where does this information all go?
Hawking concentrated on this paradox, which still confuses scientists around the world. He says that the information isn’t lost into the core of the black hole, but is stored on the boundary called the Event Horizon. He says that once a particle enters a black hole, the information is left on the event horizon. When the particle comes out – in a phenomenon called Hawking Radiation, it carries some of it back with it, thereby preserving it. A groundbreaking hypothesis, given that black holes, is considered to have gravity so strong that even light can’t escape them.
But this information returned is in a useless form, and ‘lost’ for all practical purposes. He equated this jumbled information to burning an encyclopedia where all the information will ‘technically’ will be preserved but you won’t be able to use it.
If he is able to prove this theory, our understanding of the laws of physics that govern the universe may be under threat. The very idea of time and space could fall apart if black holes are proved to be exempt from such rules.