Yes, Stephen Hawking lied to us about how black holes decay

In Hawking’s most famous book, A Brief History of Time, he made the analogy that the space is filled … [ +] have particle-antiparticle pairs where one member can escape (carrying positive energy) and the other falls in (carrying negative energy), causing the black hole to decay. This flawed analogy has continued to confound generations of physicists and laymen.

Ulf Leonhardt / University of St Andrews

This is the first explanation I’ve heard myself as a theoretical astrophysicist about how black holes decay. If this explanation were true, then this would mean:

Hawking radiation consists of a 50/50 mix of particles and antiparticles, since which member falls and which escapes will be random,

All Hawking The radiation, which causes the black hole to decay, will be emitted from the event horizon itself, and
1. Each quanta of emitted radiation must have enormous energy: enough energy from Almost, , but not quite, was swallowed by a black hole.

   Of course, none of these three points are true. Hawking radiation consists almost entirely of photons, rather than a mixture of particles and antiparticles. It emanated from a large area beyond the event horizon, not at the surface. And the single quanta emitted have tiny energies over a considerable range.

   Whether inside or outside the event horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole, space flows like … [+] Moving walks or waterfalls, depending on how you want to visualize it. But beyond the event horizon, due to the curvature of space, radiation is produced that takes energy away, causing the black hole to slowly shrink in mass over time.

   Andrew Hamilton / JILA / University of Colorado

   The strange thing about this explanation is that it’s not the one he’s using in the scientific papers he’s written on the subject. He knew the analogy was flawed and would lead physicists to think wrongly about it, but he chose to present it to the public as if people couldn’t understand the mechanism that really worked. That’s too bad, because the actual science story isn’t complicated, but more instructive. The empty space does have the entire field of quantum, and the energy value of these fields does fluctuate. There’s a germ of truth in the “particle-antiparticle pair creation” analogy, and it’s this: In quantum field theory, you can simulate the energy of vacuum space by adding up graphs that contain the creation of these particles. But this is just a computational technique; particles and antiparticles are not real, but virtual. They are not actually produced, they do not interact with real particles, and they cannot be detected in any way.

   Several terms in quantum electrodynamics that contribute to zero-point energy. … [+] The development of this theory, due to Feynman, Schwinger and Tomoyaga, led to They were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1965. These graphs may show particles and antiparticles popping in and out, but that’s just a computational tool; these particles aren’t real.

   RL Jaffe, from https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0503158.pdf

   To any observer located anywhere in the universe, the “vacuum space energy” we call zero-point energy will Where they are, they all seem to have the same value. One rule of relativity, however, is that different observers perceive different realities: observers in relative motion, or in regions with different curvatures of spacetime, in particular, will disagree with each other. So if you are infinitely far away from every source of mass in the universe, and your spacetime curvature is negligible, then You will have a certain amount of zero-point energy. If others were at the black hole’s event horizon, they would have a certain zero-point energy, which would be the same for them as you measure at infinity. However, if you try to map zero-point energies to their zero-point energies (or vice versa), the values ​​will not be consistent. From each other’s perspective, the change in zero-point energy is related to the severity of the curvature of the two spaces.

   Illustration of severely curved space-time for a point mass, which corresponds to physics … [+] A scene outside the event horizon of a black hole. As you get closer to where this mass is in spacetime, space becomes more severely curved, eventually leading to a location where not even light can escape: the event horizon. Observers in different locations will have different opinions on what the zero-point energy of the quantum vacuum is.

   Pixabay user JohnsonMartin

   This is The key point behind Hawking radiation, Stephen Hawking himself knew. In 1974, when he first deduced the famous Hawking radiation, he performed the following calculation: Calculate the difference in zero-point energy in a quantum field from curved space around a black hole to infinitely far flat space.

   The results of this calculation determine the properties of the radiation emitted from the black hole: not exactly from the event horizon, but from around it of the entire bending space. It tells us the temperature of the radiation, which depends on the mass of the black hole. It tells us the spectrum of radiation: a perfect black body, indicating the energy distribution of the photons, and – if enough energy passes through E=mc² – so are massive particles and antiparticles.

   The event horizon of a black hole is a spherical or spherical region from which there is nothing, not even … [+ ] lights up, you can run away. But beyond the event horizon, black holes are expected to emit radiation. Hawking’s 1974 work was the first to demonstrate this, arguably his greatest scientific achievement.

   NASA; DANA BERRY, SKYWORKS DIGITAL, INC.

   It also allows us to calculate an important detail that is often not understood: where the radiation from a black hole is coming from. While most pictures and visualizations show that 100% of a black hole’s Hawking radiation is emitted from the event horizon itself, it is more accurate to describe it as emitting d at a distance spanning approximately 10-20 Schwarzschild radii (radius to the event horizon) Volumetrically, the radiation decreases gradually with increasing distance. This leads us to a surprising conclusion: all collapsing objects that bend spacetime should emit Hawking radiation. It could be the tiny, imperceptible Hawking radiation that, to the extent we can count, is overwhelmed by thermal radiation even in long-dead white dwarfs and neutron stars. But it’s still there: it’s a computable, non-zero positive value that depends only on the object’s mass, spin, and physical dimensions.

   The black hole loses mass due to Hawking radiation and the evaporation rate increases. Enough… [+] Time passes and the brilliant flash of the “Last Light” is unleashed a kind of A stream of high-energy blackbody radiation that is detrimental to neither matter nor antimatter.

   NASA

   Hawking The main problem with his interpretation of his theory is that he takes a computational tool — the concept of virtual particles — and treats that tool as equivalent to physical reality. In effect, the curved space around a black hole is constantly emitting radiation due to the curvature gradient around it, and the energy comes from the black hole itself, causing its event horizon to slowly contract over time.

   The black hole did not decay because a virtual particle with negative energy fell; this is Hawking’s inadequacy to “save” him Another fantasy designed by analogy. Instead, the black hole is decaying and losing mass over time as the energy emitted by this Hawking radiation is slowly reducing the curvature of space in the region. Once enough time has passed, and the duration is enormous for realistic black holes, they evaporate completely.

   Simulated black hole decay not only leads to emission of radiation, but also decay of … [ +] maintains a stable central orbital mass for most objects. However, black holes don’t really start to decay until the decay rate exceeds the growth rate. For black holes in our universe, that won’t happen until the universe reaches about 10 billion times its current age.

   Communication Science in the European Union

   None of this should take away from Hawking’s great achievements in this area. It was he who realized the deep connection between black hole thermodynamics, entropy and temperature. It was he who combined the science of quantum field theory with his background in curved space near black holes. It was he – quite right, mind you – who figured out the properties and energy spectrum of the radiation that a black hole would produce. It is absolutely fitting that black holes are named after him by the way they decay through Hawking radiation. But the flawed analogy he makes is incorrect in his most famous book, A Brief History of Time. Hawking radiation is not the emission of particles and antiparticles from the event horizon. It does not involve inwardly descending pair members carrying negative energy. It shouldn’t even be exclusive to black holes. Stephen Hawking knew how black holes actually decay, but he told the world a very different, even incorrect, story. It’s time we all know the truth.