Well-known physicist Stephen Hawking’s most famous theory about black holes has a new update – he says that everything in the universe is doomed to vaporize. According to LiveScience, in 1974 Hawking proposed that black holes eventually evaporate by losing what is now known as Hawking radiation the gradual draining of energy in the form of light particles that bubble up around black holes’ enormously strong gravitational fields.
Now, a new study has found that black holes eventually evaporate due to Hawking radiation, but the event horizon is not as important as previously thought. New theoretical research by Michael Wondrak, Walter van Suijlekom and Hein Falcke of Radboud University has shown that Stephen Hawking was partly right about black holes.
The study was published June 2 in the leading journal “Physical Review Letters” of the American Physical Society (APS).
This radiation is also caused by gravity and the curvature of space-time. This means that all large objects in the universe, such as stellar remnants, will eventually disappear.
In this new study, scientists from Radboud University revisited this process and investigated whether the presence of an event horizon is really essential. They combined techniques from physics, astronomy and mathematics to investigate what happens when such pairs of particles form around black holes. The study showed that new particles can be created even far beyond this horizon. Michael Wondrak: “We show 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 the black hole, the curvature of space-time plays a large role in the generation of radiation. The particles are already separated there by the tidal forces of the gravitational field.” While it was previously thought that no radiation was possible without an event horizon, this study shows that such a horizon is not necessary.
Falcke: “This means that objects without an event horizon, such as the remnants of dead stars and other large objects in space, also have this kind of radiation. And after a very long time, this 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.”
