Information encoded in radiation is how we get pretty much all of the information we have about the universe. Light and radio are radiation. But I think you're

Information encoded in radiation is how we get pretty much all of the information we have about the universe. Light and radio are radiation. But I think you're overcomplicating it. Think of it as a snapshot of an object as it crosses the event horizon. That snapshot is etched into the "surface" of the horizon and emits a pattern of radiation that corresponds to it. It's pretty much the same as dropping a rock onto a planet and observing the crater from orbit. You left a mark on the surface and it emits a corresponding pattern of radiation. The real crux of the matter is that we're starting to understand that information is a lot like energy. It's generally conserved in the same way, but black holes appear to destroy matter, energy, and information in a way that doesn't really add up. So Hawking came up with the idea of Hawking radiation. It's a hypothetical way for a black hole to very slowly give back all of the matter and energy it's consumed in the form of particle radiation. If information is a conserved quantity like energy, Hawking radiation must also return all information consumed by the black hole. Information theory is pretty interesting if you're the type of person who likes to think about black holes and cosmology in their free time. AFAIK we haven't proven that Hawking radiation actually exists. It seems to work mathematically, but we'd have to go out and observe a black hole up close. It's also extraordinarily slow. As in, it would take the entire lifespan of the universe for a big black hole to evaporate into nothing. Ten to the power of hundreds of years. Just a hair shy of infinity.