AbstractsAstronomy & Space Science

Until an article by Ahmed Almheiri, Donald Marolf, Joseph Polchinski and James Sully in 2012 it was generally agreed on that an observer freely falling in to a black hole should perceive the space in the vicinity of the horizon as ordinary Minkowski space. This assumption is guided by Einstein's equivalence principle. The article by AMPS puts forward the idea that a freely falling observer should actually see high energy modes near the horizon, they call this curtain of high energy modes a firewall. Many authors have challenged the original article by AMPS. In this thesis the corresponding articles are studied and an opinion is formed about whether or not the firewall exists. Special focus will be on recent articles by 't Hooft that aim to explain the construction of the S-matrix by calculating the effects of gravitational back-reaction. This approach seems to resolve the black hole information paradox and, in particular, the firewall paradox. Advisors/Committee Members: Hooft, G. 't.