Hawking revisits his 40-year-old theory regarding black holes and causal determinism

Economist : In the mid 1970s, physicist Stephen Hawking challenged the theory of causal determinism by proposing that information could be lost forever if matter were sucked into a black hole because the black hole would eventually disintegrate. Now, however, he has revised that idea and shows how the evaporation of black holes does not necessarily mean that all the information contained in the swallowed matter will be destroyed. Hawking instead proposes that when matter falls into a black hole, it leaves traces of the information it contained in the form of the number and position of two soft particles, photons and gravitons. The informational record remains even after the black hole has disappeared. Although the explanation is incomplete because it accounts for only one property of matter—its electric charge—the principle supports the established laws of physics and could lead to a more complete understanding of black holes and the universe.