This Is Why We’ll Never Detect Hawking Radiation From An Actual Black Hole
The theoretical reasons to expect it are compelling, but the technology required to detect it is unfathomable.
All throughout our galaxy, millions of black holes of a variety of masses orbit, subject to the same rules of gravitation as every other mass in the Universe. Only, instead of emitting light dependent on their surface area and temperature, they’re completely black. Whatever exists at the singularity that’s shrouded behind each black hole’s event horizon, we cannot see it. From within a black hole, nothing, not even light, can escape.
The only light we’ve ever observed from a black hole doesn’t come from inside the black hole itself, but rather from accelerated matter that interacts somewhere outside of the event horizon. However, there is a very particular type of light that black holes ought to emit: Hawking radiation, arguably the greatest breakthrough of Stephen Hawking’s scientific career. Unfortunately, it’s almost certain that we’ll never detect it. Here’s the science of why.
