Black holes do not obliterate information about things which
fall into them, but mangle information instead. So says Stephen
Hawking, backtracking on his own theory about black holes after
30 years. The physicist was forced to concede a bet he made with
American theoretical physicist John Preskill in 1997 as he
unveiled his new theory on Wednesday. Preskill had doubted
Hawking's theory that black holes destroy everything that falls
into them. Hawking now says information can escape from within
them. He revealed his new theory to a packed auditorium at a
conference in Dublin, Ireland on Wednesday. New Scientist broke
the news on 14 July that Hawking, at the University of
Cambridge, had changed his mind about black holes after solving
a long-standing paradox in physics. "I want to report that I
think I have solved a major problem in theoretical physics,"
announced Hawking as he described his solution to the black hole
information paradox. This paradox, ironically, stems from
Hawking's own work. In the 1970s he