My friend always repeats the same old question, what good would it do to explore universe, to goto the moon or even planets. It ain't gonna make my life better!! Well, if that was our attitude some hundreds years ago, Mankind won't be where it is right now. Theoretical physics is not just to play with curious mind, it is to aid practical physics to provide some starting platform and often even, the destination. Probing the questions like what actually a blackhole is might reveal many necessary questions. For years, Hawkings had been saying that the information contained in the blackhole is destroyed when it starts emitting Hawkings radiation. This was in contrast to Quantum law of physics and Hawkings, just like Einstein did, reasoned that the Quantum law doesn't apply here. Strings thoery provided their own explanation as Oys said, most of which is hard to be validated. I think this new information might hint that, we actually might be able to retrieve information sucked into the black hole. Blackhole, eventually evaporates and with it, releases information that was sucked in for billion light years and which we can retrieve to visualize our past and predict our future. If indeed that is what Professor Hawkings is advocating and if he is right.