Evaporating Black Holes
Credit - ParallelVision: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/black-hole-nebula-space-eye-5868615/ Black holes are usually defined as regions of space-time that are so dense that nothing, not even light can escape from it. However, this is not quite true. It turns out that black holes could be evaporating, losing mass, and shrinking in the process. This phenomenon, proposed by Stephen Hawking in 1974, is called Hawking radiation. “Black holes ain’t as black as they are painted” – Stephen Hawking, August 2015 In empty space, pair production and annihilation occur spontaneously. Pair production describes the formation of a particle and its corresponding antiparticle, normally from the interaction of a high energy photon with a heavier particle. For example, an electron and a positron (antiparticle of the electron) can be formed when a high energy photon interacts with an atomic nucleus. Pair annihilation is essentially the reverse of this process: a particle colliding with its