There has been a lot of misunderstanding regarding Hawking's recent
statements. His theory about black hole radiation said things like:
T= (h c^3) / (8 pi K G M) --- T is temperature of a black hole, c is
the velocity of light, h is the Planck constant (6.626 x 10^-34), K
is the Boltzmann constant, G is the universal gravitational constant,
and M is the mass of the black hole. Hawking said that since the black
hole has a temperature observable by the outside it is radiating
energy, a very logical reasoning. Therefore, by E=Mc^2, it is also
radiating away mass. This theory has NOT been proven wrong. The
problem is this: when Hawking realized that mass radiates away, he
began to think what happens to all the information, or entropy, that
was sucked into the black hole when its mass radiates to 0 ? If it
dissapears, then the law of entropy is broken, which says entropy
cannot decrease, only increase. He suggested that the information is
lost forever. However, by solving his theory in a new way, he saw
that the energy radiating away is in the form of mangled information
of the contents of the black hole. Therefore, information CAN escape
a black hole eventually. Sorry to all you Star Trek fans, but this
also means black holes cannot be portals to other universes, because
the information within is not lost into a parallel world, but simply
radiated away. So, the data does not show that Hawking has been wrong
for 30 years, but instead shows that the question he posed when his
theory developed, the question of how can entropy be destroyed, was
not a valid question to ask. This discovery is still important though
because if he had not been wrong about this question and entropy could
be destroyed, the foundations of physics would have been shaken.
sources: Time Magazine August, Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen
Hawking