The tunneling approach for entropy generation in quantum gravity is applied
to black holes. The area entropy is recovered and shown to count only a tiny
fraction of the black hole degeneracy. The latter stems from the extension of
the wave function outside the barrier. In fact the semi-classical analysis
leads to infinite degeneracy. Evaporating black holes leave then infinitely
degenerate "planckons" remnants which can neither decay into, nor be formed
from, ordinary matter in a finite time. Quantum gravity opens up at the Planck
scale into an infinite Hilbert space which is expected to provide the
ultraviolet cutoff required to render the theory finite in the sector of large
scale physics.Comment: 26 pages + 3 figures, phyzzx macropackage, figures available from
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