A new study suggests that black holes may not be the featureless, structureless entities that Einstein's general theory of relativity predicts them to be. Instead, the cosmic monsters might be bizarre quantum objects known as "frozen stars."
While these would share some similarities with black holes, the hypothetical celestial bodies differ in crucial ways that could potentially resolve the infamous Hawking radiation paradox (named for the late physicist Stephen Hawking, who proposed the phenomenon). This paradox arises because the theoretical radiation emitted by a black hole's event horizon seemingly carries no information about the matter that formed the black hole, which contradicts a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics stating that information cannot be destroyed.
