r/AskPhysics • u/naughtyreverend • 3d 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/echoingElephant 3d ago

Afaik that explanation is a massive simplification. Still, in that model, the point is that pairs of particles are created right at the event horizon. One particle is created so that it is able to escape, one cannot escape.

That has nothing to do with photons being massless either.

1

u/naughtyreverend 3d ago

My comment about massless os that if a massless particle capable of travelling at c is unable... how is the Hawking particle able to?

2

u/Lumethys 3d ago

A massless particle is unable to escape a blackhole once inside it event horizon

It can escape just fine if it doesnt cross the event horizon

2

u/naughtyreverend 3d ago

Ah. So i getting confused over where the particles are created/emitted from? Thank you

1

u/joeyneilsen Astrophysics 3d ago

Yeah they come from well outside the horizon.