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In 1975, Stephen Hawking argued that black holes, objects that formed through the collapse of massive stars, destroyed everything that fell through them. Not even light could escape their gravitational pull. Hence the name, "black holes." His black hole theory became quite popular in scientific circles during the 1980s. When Hawking suggested that matter traveling through a black hole would disappear into a parallel universe, even sci-fi aficionados were hooked. However, his theory couldn't explain a fundamental paradox. Matter entering a black hole
could not just "disappear;" quantum physics laws state that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. The paradox inspired a 30-year debate among scientists that ended when Hawking recently came up with the answer. Black holes, he now claims, disintegrate and die after immense periods of time. As they deteriorate, their transformed contents are spit back out into the universe they came from. "If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe, but in a mangled form, which contains information about what you were like, but in an unrecognizable state," he
said. As to why Hawking had this seemingly sudden change of heart, we can only guess that some of life's puzzles take 30 years to solve.
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