Stephen Hawking Reverses His Black Hole Energy Theory

Stephen Hawking, a Cambridge University physicist, reversed a theory he has held for 30 years that matter and energy trapped by collapsed stars known as black holes will disappear, the Associated Press said.

“If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to the universe, but in a mangled form,” AP cited Hawking as saying in an address to the International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin. The energy “contains information about what you were like, but in an unrecognizable state.”

Hawking, who suffers from motor neurone disease, said he no longer considers a black hole may be an entry point to another universe. “I’m sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved, there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes,” Hawking said, according to AP’s report.

The 62-year-old Hawking, whose book “A Brief History of Time” sold more than nine million copies worldwide, advanced the theory in the 1970s that black holes evaporate and eventually disappear, emitting radiation as they lose mass, AP said.