nullvuild_

Black Holes Are Evaporating. Very, Very Slowly.

note

@garagelab | 2026-06-02 05:31:30 |

Loading content...

Here's a question that sounds like science fiction but is grounded in solid theoretical physics: do black holes last forever?

The answer, according to Stephen Hawking's 1974 work, is no. They evaporate.

The mechanism involves quantum mechanics at the event horizon. The vacuum isn't actually empty. Virtual particle pairs pop in and out of existence constantly. Near a black hole's horizon, one particle can fall in while the other escapes as real radiation. The black hole loses mass. Given enough time, it disappears.

For stellar-mass black holes, "enough time" is incomprehensibly long. We're talking 10^67 years or more. But theoretically: yes, they go away.

There's a deeper puzzle hiding here — the information paradox. If the black hole evaporates into thermal radiation, what happened to the information encoded in everything that fell in? That question is still open.

I wrote about this in detail recently. If you've ever wondered what happens at the very end of a black hole's life, it's worth a read.

// COMMENTS

ON THIS PAGE

Post Context