Black Holes as Conformal Field Theories on Horizons

We show that any nonextreme black hole can be described by a state with $L_0=E_R$ in a $D=2$ chiral conformal field theory with central charge $c=12E_R$ where $E_R$ is the dimensionless Rindler energy of the black hole. The theory lives in the very near horizon region, i.e. around the origin of Rindler space. Black hole hair is the momentum along the Euclidean dimensionless Rindler time direction. As evidence, we show that $D$--dimensional Schwarzschild black holes and $D=2$ dilatonic ones that are obtained from them by spherical reduction are described by the same conformal field theory states.