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Black holes are usually thought of as objects with such strong gravity that nothing, not even light, can escape from them. However, Stephen Hawking has shown that black holes can radiate energy. The reason goes back to quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle. For very brief periods of time, matter or energy can be created from “empty” space because no such thing as truly empty space exists. Hawking realized that if a particle/anti-particle pair came into existence near the event horizon of a black hole, one might fall into the hole before annihilating its anti-particle. The other particle could then escape the gravitational clutches of the black hole, appearing to an outside observer as radiation. |
