This was partially inspired by the event horizon post, I’ve heard of Hawkings radiation recently but don’t understand it, any help?
In: Physics
Space isn’t technically empty, it’s constantly filled with things called Virtual Particles. Virtual Particles spring up into existence from quantum fluctuations (no real simpler way to explain it) in pairs of opposites, one particle and one anti-particle. Conservation of matter says matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but that’s a bit of an over simplification. Net matter-energy must be maintained and virtual particles do not break this because each particle is equal and opposite of each other. Normally they collide together almost immedietly and annihilate into nothing again, but when virtual particles are created at the edge of event horizons, this can’t happen. One particle pops into existence inside the event horizon and is lost, the other outside and escapes, becoming a real particle. Because of conservation of matter-energy, when this happens, the escaping particle steals some mass from the Black Hole, causing it to shrink. The actual process on how it steals mass is super deep into quantum physics but another point is that the escaping mass isn’t previous mass that fell into the Black Hole, it’s new mass that escapes in the same process that adds equal and opposite “Negative Mass” to the Black Hole.
This explanation is a bit of a simplification but not inaccurate description, seeing how we are dealing with the product of Relativity colliding with Quantum Physics, the fact there is an answer that can fit this subreddit is somewhat of a miracle.
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