How the Universe is deleted
The black hole information paradox
Black holes exist. We have measured their effects on orbits in the center of the Milky Way, we have measured the gravitational waves caused by their collisions, and we have even seen one of them with the Event Horizon Telescope.
Black holes also radiate. Hawking showed that, based on our current understanding of Physics, the following equation holds:
Here, M is the mass of the black hole, T is the temperature of the radiation it emits, and the remaining terms are constants. The constants are an indication of all the different physics involved here: h, the Planck constant, has its origin in Quantum Mechanics. G is the gravitational constant which determines, among other things, the orbits of planets. And k comes from the field of Statistical Mechanics. Amazingly, all of these fields blend together in a black hole.
Hawking radiation is a theoretical result, and it is so faint that we will likely never measure it: a 2.5 solar-mass black hole, the smallest one that can theoretically be formed from a star, would radiate with a temperature of just 25nK, which is orders of magnitude below the…
