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What happens at the horizon?

The Schwarzschild metric has an apparent singularity at the horizon r=2M. What really happens there? If physics at the horizon is 'normal' laboratory physics, then we run into Hawking's information paradox. If we want nontrivial structure at the horizon, then we need a mechanism to generate this structure that evades the 'no hair' conjectures of the past. Further, if we have such structure, then what would the role of the traditional black hole metric which continues smoothly past the horizon? Recent work has provided an answer to these questions, and in the process revealed a beautiful tie-up between gravity, string theory and thermodynamics.