2005/04/30 by Rafael D. Sorkin
Physics and Astronomy · #hep-th #gr-qc
published as Stud.Hist.Philos.Mod.Phys. 36 (2005) 291-301 · plainTeX, 14 pages, no figures. several typos corrected. Most current version is available at http://www.pitp.ca/personal/rsorkin/some.papers/118.ten.theses.pdf (or wherever my home-page may be)
arxiv created 2011/10/19 · arxiv updated 2011/10/20
I present a viewpoint on black hole thermodynamics according to which the entropy: derives from horizon "degrees of freedom"; is finite because the deep structure of spacetime is discrete; is "objective" thanks to the distinguished coarse graining provided by the horizon; and obeys the second law of thermodynamics precisely because the effective dynamics of the exterior region is not unitary.