: Do black holes ever cease to exist?

It is believed so.

Stephen Hawking promotes this theory called, "Hawking radiation",that eventually extinguishes the black hole.

His reasoning is this:

Take a empty can for example, imagine you have a many particles with each having X amount of energy. Imagine that in order for one of those particles to 'escape' the opening of the can it is needed to have 2X of energy. How does a particle escape?

Well the analogy has been given as imagining a bunch of frogs in a bucket, not one frog is capable of jumping over the edge, but perhaps it is possible if one frog is sitting on another and the instant the one frog jumps (on bottom) the other frog jumps as well at the crest of the first frogs jump. Well, in theory the frog on top will escape. Thus extinguishing the BH in a finite amount of time.

This theory goes for the particles that are 'beyond' the event horizon of the BH. (if that is even imaginable)

I personally have problems with some of the intracacies within the theory, but can see it in operation outside of the EH, not beyond it.

-nåte

• Do you think they can go nova - Robert_Barbrow/">Robert Barbrow - March 3, 1999 - 12:20 UTC
  • Re: Do you think they can go nova - nåte - March 5, 1999 - 01:52 UTC
    • Nuclear Bombs - bzrd - November 14, 1999 - 17:16 UTC