OK, so this has bugged me for a while about the equivalence principle and the black hole information paradox.
If black holes "evaporate" via Hawking radiation, then they cannot exist forever.
So, from my external perspective, watching the person fall in, they slow down, freeze, and redshift to "nothing," but never cross the event horizon.
Does the equivalence principle say my perspective is valid? If it does, is it possible that that person really never crossed the event horizon?
The...