From a far-away observer’s perspective a sufficiently advanced civilization can recover every object that got within and never left, say, 100 miles of a black hole’s event horizon at any time since the black hole’s formation. This includes objects heading straight for the event horizon itself. No growth for you!
It’s been pointed out to me that physics theory leads to an equation that shows that to an observer far-away an object in free fall never crosses the event horizon. This is not just an optical effect. The physics shows that to a far-away observer the object position is always outside the event horizon.
This lead me to the following thought: If God or some super powerful alien made the black hole disappear at any time in the far-away observer’s future, then wouldn’t the far-away observer observe the object to be hovering around where the event horizon used to be?