Famous physicist Stephen Hawking has put forward a number of new theories about black holes, including the possibility that anything sucked into them might emerge in another universe.

At a public lecture in Sweden on Monday, Professor Hawking said he had discovered a theoretical way for information to be “returned out of the black hole”, the KTH Royal Institute of Technology reported.

Black holes are currently thought to be regions of space with gravitational fields so intense nothing could ever escape. But there might just be “a way out”.

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“If you feel you are in a black hole, don’t give up. There’s a way out,” Professor Hawking said.

You might either be translated into a kind of “hologram” on the edge of the black hole or pushed into an alternate universe.

“The existence of alternative histories with black holes suggests this might be possible. The hole would need to be large and if it was rotating it might have a passage to another universe.

“The message of this lecture is that black holes ain’t as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought. Things can get out of a black hole both on the outside and possibly come out in another universe.”

The bad news is, provided you survived the journey, there would be no way back.

“But you couldn’t come back to our universe. So although I’m keen on space flight, I’m not going to try that.”