Hawking radiation and how it causes black holes to evaporate

Question

Hawking radiation and how it causes black holes to evaporate

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Answer 1

The virtual antiparticle explanation is a… problematic analogy. Hawking seems to have grabbed on to a popular explanation that was easier to explain than the actual idea and carried the primary point across – that black holes can die.

My understanding is that we don’t fully know how it works. Hawking’s work shows *that* it happens, gives predictions about how quickly it happens, and we can follow the chain of understanding he used to get there.

But we don’t know exactly how it happens. And we probably won’t until we get a theory of everything.

This is admittedly unsatisfying so I will point you towards [The Science Asylum’s video on Hawking Radiation ](https://youtu.be/rrUvLlrvgxQ) as a starter and PBS Space Time’s series on Hawking Radiation for a more thorough explanation.