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Space

We may finally know how Hawking's black hole paradox could be solved

Under the laws of quantum mechanics, information about what has fallen into a black hole cannot be destroyed, and now researchers claim they have figured out how it is preserved

By Leah Crane

31 March 2023

An artist’s representation of a black hole

Shutterstock / Dima Zel

Black holes have an information problem. According to the laws of quantum mechanics, information about the state of a closed system cannot be destroyed, but black holes seem to obliterate it. Researchers have been trying for decades to solve this problem, called the black hole information paradox, and now one team claims to have finally figured it out.

The black hole information paradox was born in the 1970s when Stephen Hawking calculated that black holes should slowly evaporate by emitting random particles in…

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