Does Hawking radiation preclude information loss?
Abstract
We analyze the proper time required for a freely falling observer to reach the event horizon and singularity of a Schwarzschild black hole. Extending this to the Vaidya metric, which accounts for mass loss due to Hawking radiation, we demonstrate that the event horizon evaporates before it is reached by the infaller. This result challenges the notion of trapped observers and suggests that black hole evaporation precludes event horizon formation for any practical infaller.