Among these insights that have convinced Hawking, you find Matrix theory and especially the AdS/CFT correspondence. Gravity in asymptotically AdS spaces has an equivalent description in terms of a conformal field theory living on its boundary. This conformal field theory is manifestly unitary and has no room for destruction of the information. This answers an equivalent question about gravity, too.

This brings most sane physicists to the opinion that the information is preserved and gravitational physics is not that special after all. But it does not give us a quantitative, calculable framework that would explain how does the information get out of the black holes and what do these subtle correlations that remember the initial state look like.

— Hawking and unitarity

— Lubos Motl

2013.09.05 Thursday ACHK