Hey Explorers, What's up!
Did you know?
Black holes aren't entirely "Black." In fact, they emit radiation.
The Black Hole Paradox
Black holes form when massive stars collapse under their own gravity, creating regions with intense gravitational pull. The event horizon marks the point where nothing, including light, can escape the black hole.
(Animated simulation of a Schwarzschild black hole with a galaxy passing behind. Around the time of alignment, extreme gravitational lensing of the galaxy is observed.)
Proposed by Stephen Hawking in 1974, black holes are not entirely "black" but emit faint radiation due to quantum effects near the event horizon. Virtual particle pairs constantly pop in and out of existence in space. Near a black hole, one particle can escape, carrying away energy as radiation, while the other falls in.
This energy loss causes the black hole to shrink slowly over time and, eventually, disappear.
According to quantum mechanics, information cannot be destroyed. However, if black holes evaporate, it raises the question of what happens to the information contained in the objects they’ve absorbed.
The "black hole information paradox" remains an unsolved mystery. Some theories suggest the information might be stored in Hawking radiation or left behind as remnants.
- Black Holes Aren’t Eternal:
Although Hawking radiation is weak and undetectable on short timescales, over trillions of years, black holes could evaporate completely. A black hole with the mass of the Sun would take about 10⁶⁷ years to evaporate fully.
This paradox challenges our understanding of physics, offering potential clues toward a unified theory of quantum gravity. Black holes, once thought to be eternal, might eventually disappear, reshaping our concept of these cosmic giants.
