Renowned physicist and author Stephen Hawking recently spoke at length about black holes at the Harvard University, bringing a new dimension to the idea of these spatial configurations.
Hawking has claimed that black holes neither store material absorbed by them nor any physical information about the object that created them. He said that these black holes could be portals to a parallel universe.
By NASA's definition, a 'black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying. Because no light can get out, people can't see black holes.'
Giving an alternative definition, Hawking said that the black holes aren’t the eternal prisons they were once thought to be and 'things can get out of a black hole, both from the outside and possibly though another universe,' The Boston Globe reports.
On the question about what happens to the matter that is absorbed by a black hole, Hawking said that such a thing is equivalent to burning an encyclopedia where 'the information is not lost, if you keep all the ashes. But it is difficult to read.'
Hawking was visiting the university from England to help launch a research center on black holes.