Black Holes Aren’t So Black After All

The common expectancy, and what you were probably told was that once in a black hole, there is no going out. And that is correct, right? Get ready for your mind to be blown.

The interesting event where something comes out of a black hole (something many people might argue as impossible) is called hawking radiation. Before I get into how this phenomena occurs, let’s take a look at what a black hole is.

A black hole is an immense amount of matter collapsed into a point in space. It usually happens when a star dies. Let’s explore how they are formed.

Collapsing Stars

Something important to understand is why stars don’t immediately collapse into black holes the minute they are born. This is because of a really thin balance between fusion energy and gravity.

The blue arrows represent gravity, the black arrows represent the outwards force of fusion

As a star lives on, because of the immense heat and pressure inside of it, Hydrogen atoms literally are forced together (they fuse) into creating Helium atoms. This fusion releases a TON of energy, it is basically the idea behind a nuclear bomb. Therefore we have the outwards blast force of all of the fusion in a star, and the inwards push of gravity which should be balanced for the majority of the life of a star.

The star keeps on fusing hydrogen until it runs out of it. However, this isn’t the end. The star (now mostly helium) can still fuse helium into carbon because the pressure and heat is still fairly a bunch. However it is much, much easier to fuse hydrogen since a hydrogen atom is very light, but a helium atom is heavier.

The star keeps on repeating this process until it can’t fuse atoms. Helium turns into Carbon, which is fused into Oxygen, then to Neon, Magnesium, Silicon, Iron. Remember, as we go up the scale of fused elements over a star’s lifetime, the elements are way harder to fuse, as their atomic weight goes up.

The numbers beneath them represent their atomic mass (number of protons + number of neutrons), the greater atomic mass means, well, more massive of an atom.

If the star is massive enough, its dense, Iron core will turn into a black hole.

Black Hole Structure

A common misconception about a black hole is that it is really similar to a planet, a ball with a whole lot of gravity. It is actually quite different than that. What if I told you that the volume of a black hole was zero?

Thats right. The gravity is so mindbogglingly strong that the matter is squished into a one dimensional point with 0 volume (The singularity). That brings up the question, then aren’t black holes just too small to suck in anything with their gravitational filed? Nope. Because that point has so much gravity, there is a field around it where it can pull things (just like the gravitational field of the earth), pull things into itself, only adding to its mass. It is said that we have passed the event horizon if the gravitational field is so strong that there is no turning back.

Notice that “the point of no return” is in quotation marks

Hawking Radiation — The Show You’re Here For

Congrats! You are now where I will blabber about what you clicked for a few minutes ago. As I said, a lot of people think that nothing can come out of a black hole once past the event horizon.

Introducing you to 🥁 🥁 🥁 Hawking Radiation!!! (Only for $4.99 at the event horizon of a black hole, free shipping)

Here’s the thing, things come out of nowhere…Literally. At a quantum vacuum, where there is nothing to disrupt anything, randomly particles appear out of nowhere, along with their opposite. To keep the balance of the universe, what happens is that a positive matter particle (the matter you know of) appears, along with its opposite (anti matter). These two cancel out, (the process of annihilation) when they touch (which they very usually do).

Red = Positive Mass, Blue = Negative Mass (Anti-Matter)

It’s crazy to think that empty space is actually bubbling with activity.

Remember how I said that the “pair” particles almost all the time come together and annihilate each other? There is one rare occasion. At the event horizon of a black hole.

Let’s say that the pair appears out of nowhere. This time though, the positive particle is just outside of the even horizon, but the negative particle is inside of the event horizon. What would happen here is that the negative particle falls into the black hole, and the positive particle stays out. But when the negative particle reaches the singularity, it cancels out with some other positive particle in the singularity. This way, indirectly a positive particle is transferred from the inside of a black hole, to the outside.

The red particle in the singularity cancelled out with the blue particle that fell in, leaving the red particle outside of the black hole.

Now, the red particle in the singularity didn’t travel itself from the inside to the outside of the black hole, but it did travel indirectly.

There are other theories on hawking radiation, as it is important to keep in mind that this has not been scientifically tested, it is a theory.

I hope that this article has given you what you have clicked for, and that you have enjoyed :) I put out content consistently and tell everyone about what projects I am up to on my monthly newsletter, LinkedIn and Twitter!

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