Hawking radiation and how it causes black holes to evaporate
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The standard pop science explanation for Hawking Radiation involves virtual particles popping in and out of existence, where one falls into the event horizon and the other escapes. You will see a lot of people in this thread using that explanation. Unfortunately, it simply isn’t true. For example, if the particles are truly random, then you would expect an equal amount of particles and their anti-particles to fall in randomly. So that explanation can’t quite be the solution.
Unfortunately, there is absolutely no ELI5 level explanation available around what’s really going on. The real explanation is very complex and requires basically graduate level quantum physics. So the virtual particle ELI5 is literally the best we have. It’s not wrong, but it’s also clearly not right. It also doesn’t really work to simply call it a “simplification” of what’s going on, either.
I am usually pretty confident that I can ELI5 just about any subject that I’m familiar with. Hawking Radiation, I have concluded, simply can’t be done.
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