How Can a Black Hole Lose Mass If Nothing Can Escape?

🎧 Prefer listening with the screen off? The Sleepy Scientist is also on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0340wK7... Black holes are famous for being places from which nothing can escape, not even light. Yet according to quantum physics, these extraordinary objects may slowly lose energy, become smaller, and eventually disappear. In this gentle exploration of one of modern physics' most remarkable discoveries, we follow Stephen Hawking's groundbreaking work on black hole radiation, uncover why black holes have temperatures, how Hawking radiation allows them to lose mass, and why smaller black holes are predicted to evaporate faster than larger ones. Along the way, we explore the mysteries of quantum fields, the possibility of primordial black holes, and the unresolved black hole information paradox. Settle in, make yourself comfortable, and enjoy a quiet journey into the strange physics of objects that may not be quite as permanent as they appear. SOURCES: NASA Science — Black Holes https://science.nasa.gov/universe/bla... NASA Science — 10 Questions You Might Have About Black Holes https://science.nasa.gov/universe/10-... Nature — Black Hole Explosions? (Stephen Hawking, 1974) https://doi.org/10.1038/248030a0 Communications in Mathematical Physics — Particle Creation by Black Holes (Stephen Hawking, 1975) https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02345020 Physical Review D — Black Holes and Entropy (Jacob Bekenstein, 1973) https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.7.2333 Communications in Mathematical Physics — The Four Laws of Black Hole Mechanics https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01645742 Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society — Black Holes in the Early Universe https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/168.2.399 NASA Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope — Fermi LAT Limit on Evaporation of Primordial Black Holes https://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/m... NASA Science — Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope https://science.nasa.gov/mission/fermi/ Quanta Magazine — What Sonic Black Holes Say About Real Ones https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-s... California Institute of Technology — Do Black Holes Destroy Information? https://authors.library.caltech.edu/r... Journal of High Energy Physics — The Page Curve of Hawking Radiation from Semiclassical Geometry https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP03(2020)149