  Condensed matter black hole analogues may provide guidance in grappling with
difficult questions about the role of short distance physics in the Hawking
effect. These questions bear on the very existence of Hawking radiation, the
correlations it may or may not carry, the nature of black hole entropy, and the
possible loss of information when a black hole evaporates. We describe a model
of black hole formation and evaporation and the loss of information to a
disconnected universe in a thin film of 3He-A, and we explain why the existence
of Hawking radiation has not yet been demonstrated in this model. [We would
like this article to be accessible to researchers in both condensed matter and
gravitational physics, hence we include more than the usual amount of
introductory material.]
