Since the Reith Lectures were recorded, Professor Hawking and his colleagues have published a paper which makes a mathematical case that information can be stored in the event horizon. The theory hinges on information being transformed into a two-dimensional hologram in a process known as supertranslation. The paper, entitled ‘Soft Hair on Black Holes’, offers a highly revealing glimpse into the esoteric language of this field – as the abstract reproduced at the end of this lecture shows – and the challenge that scientists face in trying to explain it.
