Black Hole denialism

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Hawking could be onto something. If the accumulation of mass doesn't exceed loss due to radiation, then the so-called black holes are nothing more than bidirectional axial radiators.

It seems rather strange to deny that black holes exist, given that astronomers have found ample observational evidence that certain known objects are real black holes. However, it may be the case that some predictions of general relativity about black holes may not actually be correct, given that the theory is expected to break down in regimes where quantum mechanics is also expected to play a major part. Steven Hawking did a calculation in the 1970's that applies quantum field theory with a black hole background that shows that black holes ought to emit thermal radiation and thus slowly evaporate as a result. This is what we now know as Hawking Radiation. Unfortunately, this also lead to what we now call the "information loss paradox" where quantum information entering into the black hole becomes irretrievably lost and doesn't appear to be recovered even after the black hole eventually vanishes and this appears to contradict one of the most basic principles of quantum mechanics. More recent results suggest that a fully quantum mechanical (quantum gravity) treatment of the problem would show that the quantum information of the matter falling into the black hole is probably conserved in the radiation coming out.

What we normally think of as a black hole is a region of space inside a radius called the event horizon. According to general relativity, the event horizon is a boundary beyond which, space-time is so distorted and escape velocity is so high, that even light cannot escape from it. However, it is now expected that a full quantum treatment of black holes would make the event horizon "fuzzy" and not well defined at the quantum level, though it still looks like an event horizon in the classical limit. This means that some matter falling into the black hole, close to where the event horizon appears to be, can and actually does come back out of the black hole in contradiction to the classical prediction of general relativity that nothing falling into a black hole can come back out. When it comes out of the black hole, it may be in the form of radiation and quantum information may be really scrambled but the point is that a quantum treatment of black holes would suggest that everything going into a "real" black hole does eventually come back out unlike the prediction of general relativity that nothing can escape a black hole. I've been seeing people quoting Steven Hawking as recently saying that black holes don't exist but he's not saying that there are no real black holes. What he's actually saying is what I've just said now, that "real" black holes are not black holes as we normally think of them because matter falling into them eventually does come back out, though it may take a long time.

The loss due to radiation could still be greater than the accumulation of mass.