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There are a couple threads on the firewall paradox on StackExchange, however I have not been able to find one that explains the physical origin of the firewall in black hole evaporation.

There is an analogy that in order to break entanglement you need energy just as when you break a chemical bond. However this should not been taken literally.

So the question is: What is the physical origin of the firewall and why do you need energy to break the entanglement? Furthermore, should the firewall appear only after the Page time when half of the black hole mass has been evaporated (since that's when the polygamous entanglement arises)?

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The firewall is a thought experiment stressing an incompatibility between previous agreed pictures, few actually consider it an actual physical entity.

The common belief is that some of the assumptions leading to the firewall argument are incorrect in our universe; still the paper had the positive impact of forcing researchers to understand which assumptions are failing.

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  • $\begingroup$ The point is that there is no known mechanism to explain where the energy come from, but this is not surprising since we expect that the argument leading to the firewall has at least a wrong assumption in the first place. $\endgroup$
    – Rexcirus
    Commented Jul 31, 2022 at 16:46
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you for the comments. I understand that there is no proposed physical mechanism that breaks the entanglement, thus creating a firewall at the horizon. However, I am having some trouble understanding why the breaking of the entanglement needs energy. The way I understand it is that this is equivalent to "someone" making a measurement thus leading to a wavefunction collapse. So in a sense an external source interfered with the system in order to break the entanglement. This external source supplied the energy? Is this the correct reasoning? $\endgroup$
    – George Fanaras
    Commented Aug 1, 2022 at 0:01
  • $\begingroup$ @safesphere Please, can you share a reference for "The firewall is made of the Hawking radiation"? $\endgroup$
    – Rexcirus
    Commented Aug 1, 2022 at 13:34
  • $\begingroup$ @safesphere, I don't think that this is correct. The firewall should be made out of the energy that breaks the entanglement, which should be something else than the Hawking quanta... $\endgroup$
    – George Fanaras
    Commented Aug 1, 2022 at 14:04
  • $\begingroup$ @Rexcirus “a blast of Hawking radiation: the firewall” - preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2012/09/27/… $\endgroup$
    – safesphere
    Commented Aug 4, 2022 at 8:13

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