Stephen Hawking black holes

Professor John Preskill (right) raises a baseball encyclopedia he won in a bet with Professor Hawkings (left) that all matter does not disappear after entering a blackhole. They were both at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation at the Royal Dublin Society in Ireland. For years scientists were baffled by the holes which they believed were bottomless pits in space into which matter and energy would fall, vanishing forever, but Prof Hawking has revealed new calculations proving the surface of a black hole has fluctuations allowing information to leak out. (Photo by Haydn West - PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)