You may know that Stephen Hawking?s major contribution to physics was
his realization that all black holes emit radiation.

You may also know that the ?event horizon? is supposed to be the
boundary around a black hole such that, once infalling matter crosses
it, it can never get out again.

However, the time it takes (from the viewpoint of an outside observer)
for matter to reach this event horizon is infinite. This is because of Einstein?s General Relativity, which says that time slows down as you
get deeper into a strong gravitational well. From the viewpoint of the
object (or person) falling in, this time slowdown does not apply, so
the conclusion was that they would cross this boundary in a finite
time, in their timescale.

On the other hand, Hawking radiation says that all black holes will
dissipate their energy back into our Universe in a finite time. The
more massive the black hole, the longer this takes. For sizeable black
holes, this time is calculated to be many orders of magnitude greater
than the age of the known Universe. But that time is never infinite.

In other words, objects falling into a black hole will never reach the
event horizon; instead, they will always be destroyed in (what appears
to them as) a burst of Hawking radiation before they can reach it.

In other, other words, there is no ?other side? to the event horizon,
since nothing can ever get there.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.14
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)