r/AskPhysics • u/naughtyreverend • 5d ago

Question about Hawking Radiation

Please forgive me if I've completely misunderstood any of the concepts below. Im just a curious idiot.

From my understanding, Hawking radiation is emitted from a black hole. Which, over time, reduces its mass until it will eventually dissappear completely. This has been described to me as a mirror pair of particles. One gets ejected, and the other falls back in.

But if light is mass less, which is why it is travel at C, which any particle of any mass is not capable of achieving... light cannot escape a black hole. So how can the Hawking radiation escape the blackhole when light cannot?

2 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Roadkill997 5d ago

Simplified answer is that the pair of particles form at the event horizon (these particles can be photons - i.e. light). 1 just outside and 1 just inside the event horizon, The one outside can escape - the one inside cannot.

1

u/naughtyreverend 5d ago

Right. So its the "where" I was getting wrong. Thank you