Hawking radiation and how it causes black holes to evaporate
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I want to add something here that no one seems to have mentioned…
So, in quantum mechanics, there is a law known as conservation of quantum information. This law states that information can not be created or destroyed, that it must be conserved. The observation of this law has consistently held true. However, black holes challenge this. If black holes suck in everything and doesn’t allow anything to escape, it would violate conservation of information and “break” the theory of quantum mechanics.
Stephen Hawking thought a lot about this, and made math work that would account for conservation of quantum information in regards to black holes. In his theory, it basically says that quantum information is conserved by being emitted as Hawking Radiation from black holes. The consequence of this, in regards to the math, is that black holes will eventually emit everything as Hawking Radiation and evaporate.
So, Hawking Radiation is essentially a mathematical “compromise” that allows black holes to exist in a way that doesn’t break our current understanding of quantum mechanics. Unfortunately, due to the nature of black holes, it may be impossible to prove that Hawking Radiation is a real thing that happens. We may find a better theory of Quantum Mechanics in the future that accounts for black holes in a way that doesn’t require Hawking Radiation. However, for now, it works on paper.
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