Stephen Hawking shares his theory on how information escapes black holes

Stephen Hawking may have come up with an answer to a long-running debate among scientists—the fate of information that enters a black hole.

The challenge has been to reconcile the paradox presented by quantum mechanics which says the information is indestructible and general relativity which argues the opposite.

Hawking contends that it's possible for things to survive the black hole because they remain on the periphery.

He was quoted at the recent Hawking Radiation Conference as saying, "I propose that the information is stored not in the interior of the black hole as one might expect, but on its boundary, the event horizon."

And he contends that the ingoing particles get translated into a hologram and "thus they contain all the information that would otherwise be lost."

However, he believes the information is retained in a "chaotic and useless form... For all practical purposes, the information is lost."

According to him, the survival of the material and its simultaneous lack of usability solves the paradox.

Hawking also proposes that, contrary to existing beliefs, things lost in a black hole can escape, possibly to another universe.