Naked Black Hole Firewalls

Abstract

In the firewall proposal, it is assumed that the firewall lies near the event horizon and should not be observable except by infalling observers, who are presumably terminated at the firewall. However, if the firewall is located near where the horizon would have been, based on the spacetime evolution up to that time, later quantum fluctuations of the Hawking emission rate can cause the "teleological" event horizon to have migrated to the inside of the firewall location, rendering the firewall naked. In principle, the firewall can be arbitrarily far outside the horizon. This casts doubt about the notion that firewalls are the "most conservative" solution to the information loss paradox.