Hawking set out to disprove this suggestion, arguing that the law of thermodynamics meant that if a black hole had entropy then it must have a temperature, that if it had a temperature it must radiate, and if it radiated it would not be a black hole. He failed, if you can call it that, showing instead that, due to the interaction of gravity with quantum mechanics, black holes must continuously emit Hawking radiation; black holes were in fact not black.
