Stephen Hawking is not afraid to question the scientific community, and he's done it again with his bold proclamation that black holes aren't really black at all. In fact, he goes one step further: he claims that black holes don't exist.

According to The Huffington Post, Hawking -- who was actually one of the first creators of the modern black hole theory -- posted a paper, based on his studies at the University of Cambridge, in which he states that the so-called "event horizons" of black holes (that is, the parts of black holes in which nothing, not even light, can escape) don't exist. Instead, he opines that there's something called an "apparent horizon" (that is, a part of a black hole which only temporarily holds matter and energy before releasing it in a more neutralized form).

"There is no escape from a black hole in classical theory," Hawking told Nature. Quantum theory, however, "enables energy and information to escape from a black hole." A full explanation of the process, the physicist admits, would require a theory that successfully merges gravity with the other fundamental forces of nature. But that's a goal that has eluded physicists for nearly a century. "The correct treatment," Hawking says, "remains a mystery."

In addition, according to News.com of Australia, just the mere suggestion that Hawking could call his own theories into question is indicative of how powerful those theories, indeed, really are. "Raphael Bousso, a theoretical physicist and former student of Hawking's states: "'the idea that there are no points from which you cannot escape a black hole is in some ways an even more radical and problematic suggestion than the existence of firewalls,' he says. 'But the fact that we're still discussing such questions 40 years after Hawking's first papers on black holes and information is testament to their enormous significance,'" reports the site.