Have you been following Lee Smolin’s thoughts about time and possible tuning of the parameters of the Standard Model through new universe generation via black hole creation? I’ve only read his ‘popular’ treatments, Life of the Cosmos, The Trouble With Physics,Time Reborn and The Singular Universe (with R.M. Unger). Do you have any comments about their ideas?

I also have a question about Hawking radiation and event horizons. The mental picture I have is that the radiation is considered to be anisotropic, only emerging from the black hole. Certainly the only effect we see is on ‘our side’ of the event horizon. Would the event horizon be radiating inwards as well, or does the curvature gradient generate anisotropy? And since mass seems to all be of one kind (even antiparticles have ‘normal mass’ rather than ‘anti-mass’, whatever that might be), wouldn’t the black hole be gaining mass from the inward radiation?

My undergraduate physics classes were a long time ago. I can only ask dumb undergrad questions and aspire to asking dumb post-grad questions. ;-} But thanks again for your posts!