Stephen Hawking presents new theory on black holes

Cambridge University Professor Stephen Hawking has proposed a new theory of black holes, arguing that information lost in black holes could be stored in alternate universes and that some black holes could be passages to them.

Speaking at a ‘Hawking Radiation’ conference last week in Stockholm, Hawking said the message of his lecture was that black holes “ain't as black as they are painted".

“They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought to be,” he said. “Things can get out of a black hole both on the outside and possibly come out in another universe.”

Hawking said the existence of alternative histories with black holes suggested this might be possible. But the hole would need to be large and, if it was rotating, it might have a passage to another universe. Then again, travellers could not return to our universe.

“So although I’m keen on space flight, I'm not going to try that,” he joked.

Information paradox

Co-sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Nordic Institute of Theoretical Physics, Cambridge University and the Julian Schwinger Foundation, the conference drew 3,000 people to hear Hawking speak in an open lecture.

He received a standing ovation on entering the Stockholm Waterfront Congress Centre.

The next day, Hawking further elaborated his new theory on black holes at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. KTH published a video-cut of the presentation.

The conference drew some 35 to 40 of the world’s leading physicists addressing the ‘information paradox’ of what happens with information on the physical state of things that are swallowed up by black holes due to their enormous gravitational force.

It is a theoretical dilemma that has remained unsolved since the theory of the existence of black holes in the universe was formulated more than 40 years ago.

Is this information retrievable? According to quantum mechanics it should be. But no theory has been forwarded until now on how the information may be retrievable.

In Stockholm, Hawking presented a new theory that black holes do not destroy or swallow up the information, but store it in a two-dimensional hologram “at the surface of the black hole’s event horizon, or the field surrounding each black hole which represents its point of no return”.

Seeking intelligent life beyond Earth

Last month in London, Hawking and other researchers announced a new US$100 million project ‘Breakthrough Listen’, described as “the most powerful, comprehensive and intensive scientific search ever undertaken for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth”.

‘Breakthrough Listen’ will survey the million stars in the Milky Way closest to Earth, as well as the 100 closest galaxies. A second ‘Breakthrough Message’ project will comprise an international competition to generate messages representing humanity and Earth.

“We believe that life arose spontaneously on Earth, so in an infinite universe, there must be other occurrences of life,” Hawking said at the Royal Society in London where the initiative was announced.

“Somewhere in the cosmos, perhaps intelligent life might be watching these lights of ours, aware of what they mean.

“Or do our lights wander a lifeless cosmos, unseen beacons announcing that, here on one rock, the universe discovered its existence? Either way, there is no better question.

“It's time to commit to finding the answer, to search for life beyond Earth. The Breakthrough initiatives are making that commitment. We are alive. We are intelligent. We must know.”