It might sound like heresy, but three researchers from Case Western Reserve University have concluded that there's nothing inside a black hole. The math is mind-boggling, but it might explain a paradox that has challenged physicists for decades.
The researchers are Tanmay Vachaspati, Dejan Stojkovic and Lawrence M. Krauss, and they published their theories in an article called Observation of Incipient Black Holes and the Information Loss Problem, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review D.
Here's the problem: the information paradox.
When matter is consumed by a black hole, it passes across the event horizon, and all information about the matter is lost. No big deal, right? Well, according to physicists, this loss of information violates the laws of quantum mechanics and general relativity.
Stephen Hawking proposed that black holes evaporate slowly over time, releasing matter back into the Universe, but this matter is stripped of its original information. Since this loss of information violates those laws of physics, something's got to give to solve the paradox.
Vachaspati, Stojkovic and Krauss propose that from the point of view of an outside observer, objects falling into a black hole take an infinite amount of time to reach the event horizon, where the information would be lost. In other words, the black hole completely evaporates before the event horizon is able to form, and no information is lost.
Any existing black holes would need to have been formed at the beginning of time.
