Thorne and Hawking argued that since
general relativity made it impossible for
black holes to radiate, and lose information, the mass-energy and information carried by
Hawking radiation must be "new", and must not originate from inside the black hole
event horizon. Since this contradicted the idea under
quantum mechanics of microcausality, quantum mechanics would need to be rewritten. Preskill argued the opposite, that since quantum mechanics suggests that the information emitted by a black hole relates to information that fell in at an earlier time, the view of black holes given by general relativity must be modified in some way. The winning side of the bet would receive an encyclopedia of their choice, "from which information can be retrieved at will". In 2004, Hawking announced that he was conceding the bet, and that he now believed that black hole horizons should fluctuate and leak information, in doing so providing Preskill with a copy of
Total Baseball, The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia. Comparing the useless information obtainable from a black hole to "burning an encyclopedia", Hawking later joked, "I gave John an encyclopedia of baseball, but maybe I should just have given him the ashes." Thorne, however, remained unconvinced of Hawking's proof and declined to contribute to the award. Hawking's argument that he solved the paradox has not yet been wholly accepted by the scientific community, and a consensus has not yet been reached that Hawking provided a strong enough argument that this is in fact what happens. Hawking had earlier speculated that the
singularity at the centre of a black hole could form a bridge to a "baby universe", into which the lost information could pass; such theories have been very popular in science fiction. But according to Hawking's new idea, presented at the 17th
International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, on 21 July 2004 in
Dublin, black holes eventually transmit, in a garbled form, information about all matter they swallow: == Earlier Thorne–Hawking bet ==