Stephen Hawking says there are no black holes

Jan. 25 (UPI) -- Physicist Stephen Hawking published a paper online saying black holes don't exist in the way scientists have traditionally classified them.

The paper, titled "Information preservation and weather forecasting for black holes," dismisses the idea of an event horizon — the point at which the gravitational pull in a black hole is inescapable — and instead posits a more benign "apparent horizon" exists.

“There is no escape from a black hole in classical theory,” Hawking told Nature.com. Quantum theory, though, “enables energy and information to escape from a black hole."

Hawking's new work hasn't been peer reviewed, but he based in on a talk he gave via Skype at an August meeting at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, Calif.

In an "apparent horizon," there is a surface where light rays attempting to rush away from the black hole's core are suspended.

[Nature.com]