For years, physicists have argued black holes are the ultimate vaults, entities that swallow information and then evaporate without leaving behind any clues as to what they once contained.

Black holes hold unfathomable mysteries and the most mysterious among them is the question of what happens to matter once it's sucked into the black hole.

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Scientists no longer think matter is irretrievably lost forever. The latest theory provides a mathematical solution to the "loss paradox" that has plagued black hole physicists.

This theory maintains matter that enters a black hole still exists in some form, actually disproving Stephen Hawking's theory of material destruction by black holes.

The new study outlines how interactions between particles emitted by a black hole can reveal information about what lies within, such as characteristics of the object that formed the black hole to begin with, and characteristics of the matter and energy drawn inside.

"According to our work, information isn't lost once it enters a black hole. It doesn't just disappear," says Dejan Stojkovic, associate professor of physics at University at Buffalo.

The paper calculated that an observer standing outside a black hole can recover information about the matter at the heart of the black hole by analyzing particle interactions such as gravitational attraction.

Interactions between particles can range from gravitational attraction to the exchange of mediators like photons between particles. Such "correlations" have long been known to exist, but many scientists discounted them as unimportant in the past.

Apparently, the scientific community has known of such correlating information for a while, but this is the first paper to flesh out the connection mathematically. Originally, many scientists deemed these correlations as ineffective because they were so minute, but Stojovic calculated these interactions grow over time, and become large enough to significantly affect calculations.

The study was partially funded by the National Science Foundation and published in the Physical Review Letters.

TagsBlack Holes, Stephen Hawking's theory, Stephen Hawking, theory of material destruction by black holes, theory of material destruction, theory of everything, space exploration, gravitational attraction, Black Holes Don't Lose Information At All, New Theory Proves