NaAtMaD – News and Articles that Make a Difference

Physicists have come up with a way to explain how information could escape from a black hole, an idea that’s been debated since the 1970s.

But the new proposal leaves the long-held concept of a space-time continuum in tatters.

Whether you’ve been following the arguments over the years or not, now might be a good time to reach for some aspirin, as space-time continuum textbooks may have to be revised.

First, some basics: Black holes are like kitchen sinks. Stuff is only supposed to go one direction, and then it’s gone forever, lost to the formidable clutches of gravity in a bizarre distortion of space and time, or what scientists call space-time. You no longer have to be an Einstein to have heard as much, though all this is indeed based on his work.

However, in the 1970s, Stephen Hawking declared that black holes leak. Eventually, like a tire doing a slow, inaudible pffffft, everything that was sucked in would seep out. But, and this was a big but that Hawking proposed, any information that went into the black hole would be lost. Whatever stuff leaked out, in other words, would not be identifiable as corresponding ingoing stuff. — according to msnbc.com