the thing I find weird is that this has been discussed - and even shown by Hawking, bloody ages ago in his 1974 paper. I couldn't find an online version of the paper but the below gives a clear enough outline

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/slac/me...0605/chen.html

According to Hawking, if a particle and antiparticle pair is created near the event horizon of a black hole, gravity will pull one of the particles into the hole permanently, while the other particle (or antiparticle) can escape, or be "radiated," from the black hole. "In this way the black hole could radiate something from nothing," said Chen.
really this isn't new - I only wish I had a chance to hear what he actually said to cause all this attention.

Having just read the link Neg provided..... actually I can see where his reversal comes from - Darkes its not actually about the event horizon as such... what Hawking is more or less proposing is the existence of white holes - something which although previous postulated by other physicists has alwasy been denied by Hawking.

Z