Water left out in the sun, evaporates.Gasoline evaporates.
And black holes!
Yep.
They do too.
Hi there you little quantum wiggles in space-time, Trace here for DNews!
First things first, make sure you’re sitting down for this episode, things are about to
get deep.
Like a supermassive black hole’s gravitational well “deep”…
So, black holes.
I think most of us have a pretty good idea about what a black hole is, even if we don’t
necessarily understand , you know, what it is, you know what I mean.
Black holes are basically regions in the universe where physics flips us the bird and takes
a holiday.
They are regions that are so dense with matter that their gravity becomes so strong that
even light cannot escape and the normal laws of physics no longer apply.
They're made of two things: a dense, massive singularity and an “event horizon,” which
is basically the point of no return where gravity gets so high nothing escapes.
We will never know what lies between the event horizon and singularity (unless you’re Matthew
McConaughey I guess) as no information can escape past the event horizon.
If you looked in, you’d be forever lost from the universe inside the who-knows-whatness
that lies beyond.
However, in recent decades, physicists have been debating the possibility that information
can escape from a black hole via something called Hawking Radiation, which throws a curveball
for the “classical” model of black hole physics.
British physics superhero Stephen Hawking started playing with this idea in the 1970s.
He came to the conclusion that not only can information escape the black hole’s clutches,
it can also carry mass away from the black hole.
Black holes that aren't gaining mass, will eventually lose it and disappear -- or evaporate.
Basically, this information is just electromagnetic radiation, like light.
It's called "information" because it's encoded with information about what has fallen beyond
the event horizon into the black hole!
Something we know nothing about.
So, taking this to its logical conclusion, black holes are not permanent features in
the cosmos!
Because if they’re not sucking in matter, they slowly evaporate and eventually disappear!
This works because the vacuum of space isn't really a vacuum.
We just did a video about how virtual particles pop in and out of existence.
It's a quantum mechanics thing, and it's complicated -- so just know they do this, and that they do
it in pairs.
Those pairs pop into existence, and then hit each other and disappear -- this is called
“annihilation”.
This is good, because energy cannot be created or destroyed, and the math must balance.
Because they annihilate, they don't break any law! QUANTUM LAWWWWW!
I just love doing that.
Sometimes, these pairs will appear in that no-man's land between the event horizon and
the singularity of a black hole.
In this situation, theoretical physicists think that one of the virtual particle pairs
should fall into the black hole, while the partner of the pair is stuck on the other
side on its lonesome.
We'll call this lonesome particle Jared.
This is where things get interesting.
According to quantum dynamics, that lonesome Jared particle is now stuck in our universe!
It becomes “real” so it can't disappear again!
It's no longer "virtual".
It’s gifted with a mass and energy, like Pinnochio turning from a wooden toy into a
real boy.
But to conserve energy (another pretty heavy physics law that has to be obeyed!), the virtual
particle that fell into the black hole must carry some kind of negitive energy, therefore very
slightly reducing the amount of energy inside that black hole.
The net effect is that the Jared particle (like a photon of radiation) is sent out of the
black hole into space, and the black hole loses a little bit of mass.
If this is continuously happening and a black hole is no longer eating new mass, it will
lose mass overall.
This is called "evaporating."
Scientists are currently looking for the gamma-ray signal that would be generated each time one
of these black holes pop out of existence.
Though we've never seen it happen, yet.
Also, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider are looking to create ultra-tiny micro black
holes, which would fizzle out of existence really fast, helping us better understand
this evaporating process.
Though Hawking Radiation is fun to consider, it has added fuel to the epic battle between
general relativity and quantum dynamics, culminating in the “black hole firewall paradox”!
But we probably should save that for another day...
Speaking of the Large Hadron Collider, we visited this crazy particle accelerator to
give you an inside look. Check it out.
How's your brain feeling after all of this? A little stretched? A little tough?
Let us know down in the comments if you want us to do more of these
videos and keep watching so you get more DNews.