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Concept
Hawking radiation
Summary
Hawking radiation is the theoretical thermal black body radiation released outside a black hole's event horizon. This is counterintuitive because once ordinary electromagnetic radiation is inside the event horizon, it cannot escape. It is named after the physicist Stephen Hawking, who developed a theoretical argument for its existence in 1974. Hawking radiation is predicted to be extremely faint and is many orders of magnitude below the current best telescopes' detecting ability.
Hawking radiation reduces the mass and rotational energy of black holes and is therefore also theorized to cause black hole evaporation. Because of this, black holes that do not gain mass through other means are expected to shrink and ultimately vanish.
For all except the smallest black holes, this would happen extremely slowly. The radiation temperature is inversely proportional to the black hole's mass, so micro black holes are predicted to be larger emitters of radiation than larger black holes and should dissipate faster per their mass. As such, if small black holes exist such as permitted by the hypothesis of primordial black holes, they ought to die the fastest the smaller they shrink, leading to a final cataclysm of high energy radiation alone. Such radiation surges have not been detected as of yet.
First predicted by Einstein's 1915 theory of general relativity, evidence for the astrophysical objects termed black holes began to mount half a century later, and these objects are of current interest primarily because of their compact size and immense gravitational attraction.
A black hole can form when enough matter or energy is compressed into a volume small enough that the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. Nothing can travel that fast, so nothing within a certain distance, proportional to the mass of the black hole, can escape beyond that distance. The region beyond which not even light can escape is the event horizon; an observer outside it cannot observe, become aware of, or be affected by events within the event horizon.
Official source
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