Posted on 06/05/2023 11:45:29 AM PDT by Red Badger
Concept Black Hole Illustration
A team of researchers has affirmed Stephen Hawking’s prediction about the evaporation of black holes via Hawking radiation, though they’ve provided a crucial modification. According to their research, the event horizon (the boundary beyond which nothing can escape a black hole’s gravitational pull) is not as important as previously believed in producing Hawking radiation. Instead, gravity and the curvature of spacetime play significant roles in this process. This insight extends the scope of Hawking radiation to all large objects in the universe, implying that, over a sufficiently long period, everything in the universe could evaporate.
Research shows Stephen Hawking was mostly correct about black holes evaporating via Hawking radiation. However, the study highlights that the event horizon isn’t essential for this radiation, and gravity and spacetime curvature play significant roles. The findings suggest that all large objects, not just black holes, could eventually evaporate due to a similar radiation process.
New theoretical research by Michael Wondrak, Walter van Suijlekom, and Heino Falcke of Radboud University has shown that Stephen Hawking was right about black holes, although not completely. Due to Hawking radiation, black holes will eventually evaporate, but the event horizon is not as crucial as has been believed. Gravity and the curvature of spacetime cause this radiation too. This means that all large objects in the universe, like the remnants of stars, will eventually evaporate.
Using a clever combination of quantum physics and Einstein’s theory of gravity, Stephen Hawking argued that the spontaneous creation and annihilation of pairs of particles must occur near the event horizon (the point beyond which there is no escape from the gravitational force of a black hole). A particle and its anti-particle are created very briefly from the quantum field, after which they immediately annihilate. But sometimes a particle falls into the black hole, and then the other particle can escape: Hawking radiation. According to Hawking, this would eventually result in the evaporation of black holes.
Gravitational Particle Production Mechanism in a Schwarzschild Spacetime
Schematic of the presented gravitational particle production mechanism in a Schwarzschild spacetime. The particle production event rate is highest at small distances, whereas the escape probability [represented by the increasing escape cone (white)] is highest at large distances. Credit: Physical Review Letters
Spiral
In this new study, the researchers at Radboud University revisited this process and investigated whether or not the presence of an event horizon is indeed crucial. They combined techniques from physics, astronomy, and mathematics to examine what happens if such pairs of particles are created in the surroundings of black holes. The study showed that new particles can also be created far beyond this horizon. Michael Wondrak: “We demonstrate that, in addition to the well-known Hawking radiation, there is also a new form of radiation.”
Everything evaporates
Van Suijlekom: “We show that far beyond a black hole the curvature of spacetime plays a big role in creating radiation. The particles are already separated there by the tidal forces of the gravitational field.” Whereas it was previously thought that no radiation was possible without the event horizon, this study shows that this horizon is not necessary.
Falcke: “That means that objects without an event horizon, such as the remnants of dead stars and other large objects in the universe, also have this sort of radiation. And, after a very long period, that would lead to everything in the universe eventually evaporating, just like black holes. This changes not only our understanding of Hawking radiation but also our view of the universe and its future.”
The study was published on June 2 in Physical Review Letters by the American Physical Society (APS).
Reference: “Gravitational Pair Production and Black Hole Evaporation” by Michael F. Wondrak, Walter D. van Suijlekom and Heino Falcke, 2 June 2023, Physical Review Letters. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.221502
Michael Wondrak is excellence fellow at Radboud University and an expert in quantum field theory. Walter van Suijlekom is a Professor of Mathematics at Radboud University and works on the mathematical formulation of physics problems. Heino Falcke is an award-winning Professor of Radio Astronomy and Astroparticle Physics at Radboud University and known for his work on predicting and making the first picture of a black hole.
Universe = This Is A Test
But think just how much faster it will happen if we don’t give government more power and go “carbon free?”
Oh noes! We’s all goin to die.
I don't remember
Why not? If not us, then who?
What a total crock of crap!
Typical problem when many scientists & engineers have been educated in government educational asylums using million-man math...
I hate it when that happens.
Quickly scanned the article, so, if I missed it, my apologies.
If what is being referred to is the “heat death of the universe,” the timeline I’ve seen is +/- 100 trillion Earth years. Not exactly the day after tomorrow.
That is unless some prior nucleating event causes the shimmering infinite energy field to collapse like a supersaturated solution.
Hmmm…
“And God said: ‘Let there be light!’”
At ‘Absolute Zero’, even atoms fall apart....................
Stephen was hawking radiation when that wasn't cool.
Let’s just hope we don’t see her as a naked singularity!
Yes.
According to the videos and articles, eventually everything in the Universe ends up being sucked into black holes and broken down to subatomic particles.. All the while, the black holes are consuming each other as well. The supermassive black holes reach a stage of equilibrium in their distribution neither attracting nor repulsing each other. Then Hawking radiation takes over and the black holes evaporate and all you have left is the radiation. As mentioned before, the time scale for all this to occur is immense.
So, at the end under this scenario, all that remains is a dark void uniformly filled with radiation (energy).
The bit at the end of my post about a supersaturated solution was just a riff on a high school chemistry experiment and the Law of the Conservation of Energy and Matter. As I understand it, the Law says that you cannot destroy matter (as in blot it entirely out of existence) but only convert it into energy. So what situation exists when the entire Universe is converted into Hawking radiation? What would be required to begin forming sub particles, etc? That made me think of the supersaturated solution experiment from high school. Here’s an example of what happened from YouTube:
(Note: We did the experiment with sugar. Here sodium acetate was used.)
So what happens when the precipitation event is occurring in unbounded space with infinite, or near infinite, amounts of energy waiting to be crystallized back into matter? Perhaps there was a Big Crunch preceding the Big Bang as all the newly created matter, collapsing on itself in an exothermic reaction, exploded outward.
Got to be careful here. The implication that existence is just a terribly long cycle of energy and matter exchanging states with everything that happens in between just being extraneous detail can be depressing if you think about it too long.
Nonsense...
Here’s my theory:
Once the last of the stars are extinguished, and nothing is left but Black Holes where entire galaxies once reigned, the Black Holes themselves will coalesce through their enormous gravity wells, combining and merging and eventually becoming one ULTRA BLACK HOLE, of unimaginable size and mass of sextillions of sextillions of Suns, become unstable, and a silent ‘new’ Big Bang starts the cycle all over again........................
Only Doctor Who knows for sure...
Will have to check with him, the next time he is here...
Mathematicians end decades-long quest to find elusive ‘vampire einstein’ shape
News
By Paul Sutter published about 7 hours ago
Researchers have discovered a new 14-sided shape called the Spectre that can be used to tile a surface without ever creating a repeating pattern, ending a decades’ long mathematical hunt.
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