Talk:Hawking radiation/Archive 1

Pending confirmation
Removed pending confirmation:


 * Recent observation of Black Holes has confirmed that they do emit radiation, for example a recent example showed that one Black Hole was emitting sound at 47 octaves below middle C.

I don't think so... I think this person is getting Hawking radiation confused with gravitational radiation -- Tim Starling 06:45, Sep 10, 2003 (UTC)

Let's see. Middle C is 278 hertz I think, so the 'sound' frequency would be 278/247 Hz, corresponding to a period of 16000 years. Nah... &mdash;Herbee 14:04, 2004 Feb 25 (UTC)

Physicists are working hard to directly detect gravitational radiation but haven't done so yet (21 October 2006). I think he's getting Hawking radiation confused with rapidly rotating pulsars or with a rotating pulsar - black hole pair - AG, Stockport, UK.

In case anyone wants to follow this up, the observation that seems to have spurred this debate is reported here: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/09sep_blackholesounds.htm. Xarqi 02:30, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Area of a sphere
The area of a sphere is normally 4πr², but space near a black hole is curved so this probably needs a correction. What is the expression for the surface area of a Schwarzschild black hole's event horizon? This has bearing on my calculation of the power emitted in Hawking radiation. &mdash;Herbee 22:13, 2004 Feb 24 (UTC)


 * It is 4πr2 because the blackholes metric is spherically symmetric, and thus on the surface of the sphere we can treat it as though it were imbedded in euclidean geometry(so long as we do not refer to anything off the surface).
 * JeffBobFrank 04:31, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm not buying that. A circle drawn on a sphere is also symmetric, but its circumference is certainly not 2πr.
 * &mdash;Herbee 13:52, 2004 Feb 25 (UTC)


 * The metric tensor of the sphere is not equivalent to that of a plane, even when we limit ourselves to the circle, and discard the components that lead out of the circle, whereas in this case distances are the same as long as the time component and the radial component(the only ones that changed from what it would be without the black hole) are 0. Since the sphere being considered is at constant time and distance from the black hole it does have the same surface area.
 * JeffBobFrank 19:49, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Isn't the radial coordinate *defined* to be such that the area of a sphere at radius r is 4πr2?? -Lethe | Talk 10:37, May 4, 2005 (UTC)


 * That's correct. If you look at the Schwarzschild coordinates page, you can see that the part of the metric involving r, dtheta and dphi is exactly the same as in flat space spherical coordinates.  So the area of a sphere located at coordinate radius r is 4πr2.


 * The sublety is that if you wanted to get to this sphere from r=0 you wouldn't go a physical distance r, but some other distance... This is how the curvature of the Schwarzchild metric enters. Wesino 23:21, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Information paradox
I've added a note to this article and Hawking's article explaining that the vaporization of particles at the event horizon has been called incorrect by Hawking. I've also noted that he will present new findings at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin, Ireland in July 2004.

I'll try to update the article once Hawking has presented his findings.


 * Hawkings talk in Dublin was not to disprove Hawking radiation, but rather Information loss in evaporating black holes. Since information loss is not mentioned in this article (although it should be), nothing in this article was disprove by Hawking's Dublin talk, therefore I am removing your notice. -Lethe | Talk 21:46, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)


 * Since anything falling into the black hole affects the black holes mass, and since the black hole's mass affects hawking radiation, then how come Hawking thinks that information is lost when a black hole radiates? Even if the virtual particle pairs appear randomly, would the radiation still not be directly caused by the fact that something fell into the black hole so that the event horizon is exactly at the location where it will obsorb one and let the other escape? -70.51.209.90 15:47, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

First equation unclear
Could someone please consider cleaning up the following, which is totally unclear without following the link to Plank units:

"Tsub(h) = κ/2π,

... where G, c, ħ and k are all equal to 1..."

There are no G, c, ħ or k in the equation!

It is frustratingly unclear to have to follow the Natural Units link to understand the explanation for the equation


 * It's only frustratingly unclear if you have some perverse engineer's insistence on particular units. In natural units, all those constants are 1, which is why they do not appear in the equation.  Many people (including me) think that this makes the equation more clear, not less clear.  Here is what the equation says in words: the temperature is proportional to the surface gravity.  The constant of proportionality is whatever combination of G, c and h it takes to turn temperature units into acceleration units (plus an additional 2π).  What is that combination?  Who cares!?  Not I.


 * It is true that natural units can be somewhat confusing if you're not too familiar with them. But then again, so can a lot of things in physics.  Maybe the equation would be easier for dilletantes if equations in theoretical physics were written in SI units.  But this is tedious and does not conform to the actual practices of physicists.  -Lethe | Talk 10:06, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

Dear Lethe: Wikipedia is for the general public, not just physicists (like you and me). Can't we find a succinct way of making the point without going far offtopic? - AG, Stockport, UK.

Hawking radiation and matter/antimatter bias?
With “classical Hawking radiation”, a “dark star” in a universe predominantly made of matter should be emitting particles that are also predominantly “normal” particles rather than “antiparticles”. If dark star radiation is technically “proper” Hawking radiation (Visser), then presumably the QM rules for Hawking radiation, applied to dark stars, will be able to predict this.

But for a GR&QM black hole, if we explain particle production as a purely quantum effect, with particle-antiparticle pairs constantly being created and destroyed above the horizon and a few pairs being wrenched apart by tidal forces so that one escapes. . . if the escaping material is again predominantly normal matter, to match the characteristics of the hole’s background, then how does the hole’s gravity “know” that it is supposed to be catching the antiparticles from the pairs in preference to the “normal” particles? How does the particle-production process know to polarise itself so that the “antiparticle” is aimed more towards the horizon and the “particle” is aimed more away from it?

On the other hand, if the previous paragraph is wrong, and the hole’s particle-catching abilities affect matter and antimatter equally, and the hole emits equal amounts of particles and antiparticles as Hawking radiation, then presumably the external behaviour of GR&QM black holes isn’t really the same as for QM-modelled dark stars after all. And presumably a certain amount of the escaping matter-antimatter mix would then mutually annihilate, so that the Hawking radiation would contain a higher proportion of EM radiation over particulate matter if it came from a black hole than if it came from a dark star.

I think that either result would be interesting. Has anyone tackled this problem yet? ErkDemon 14:17, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Relative masses
From the "Black Hole Evaporation" section:


 * For a black hole of one solar mass, we get an evaporation time of 1067 years&mdash;much longer than the current age of the universe. But for a black hole of 1011 kg, the evaporation time is about 3 billion years. This is why some astronomers are searching for signs of exploding primordial black holes.

I'm not familiar with the Sun's mass in scientific notation. Can it please be expressed numerically, to compare with the 1011 kg value? &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.93.216.253 (talk • contribs).


 * Added. It's listed at Sun. --Christopher Thomas 16:34, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Virtual particles again
I've moved the following comment by User:Kokot.kokotisko (talk • contribs) here: "Actually, John Baez said that the above explanation is not even simplified, but outright flawed and misleading, but I personally cannot judge it." --Christopher Thomas 20:36, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Opening phrase
The phrase "in physics" seems to be me to overly colloquial. If it is correct to introduce the Hawking radiation topic with "in physics", then it would be conceivable that articles on just about everything should start with "in ". I would prefer to see that phrase removed. Peashy 09:23, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Can some knowledgeable person fix this please?
"Loop quantum gravity has made a detailed studies of the quantum geometry of black hole horizon." I could make it grammatically correct, but I'm not sure exactly what is intended.

Thanks. Xarqi 03:46, 18 May 2007 (UTC) xarqi

Power-lifetime discrepancy
According to the article,

$$P=\hbar\,c^6/15360G^2M^2$$

As power is energy per time, and the total energy of the black hole is $$Mc^2$$,

$$Mc^2/t_{\operatorname{ev}} = \hbar\,c^6/15360G^2M^2$$

Dividing this by $$Mc^2$$ and inverting this gives:

$$t_{\operatorname{ev}} = 15360G^2M^3/\hbar\,c^4$$

Why is this three times greater than it should be?


 * Because you haven't considered that the power production rate increases as the mass decreases.

Instead, we get

$$dM/dt = \hbar\,c^4/15360G^2M^2$$

$$dM/dt M^2 = \hbar\,c^4/15360G^2$$

$$d(M^3)/dt / 3 = \hbar\,c^4/15360G^2$$

$$d(M^3)/dt = \hbar\,c^4/5120G^2$$

as expected. Ben Standeven 01:51, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Problems with the theory
The "Problems with the theory" section doesn't really talk about problems at all, i.e., not problems that weren't addressed decades ago --Lionelbrits 03:46, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that the problems with HR have been resolved to everyone's satisfaction. If you have a definitive source on it please do cite it. Or do you mean that we should be talking about the information paradox of black hole evaporation here instead? --Michael C. Price talk 05:55, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Non-electromagnetic contribution
$$P={\hbar\,c^6\over15360\,\pi\,G^2M^2}$$

This is only the electromagnetic contribution to the Hawking radiation. Black holes will also radiate neutrinos, axions, gravitons, etc. etc. Count Iblis 22:37, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * True, but the EM contribution is (overwhelmingly) dominant, just as it is for black body radiation generally. --Michael C. Price talk 23:24, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't see how that can be the case for massless or almost massless particles. E.g., normal "black bodies" are transparant to neutrinos, but black holes are not. If you have a hypothetical black body that would absorb incident neutrinos, then it would emit neutrinos according to the Fermi-Dirac distribution at chemical potential zero. Count Iblis 00:20, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Could be. Would also apply to gravitons.  Presumably by the equipartition of energy the formula would be modified by the multiplication by a factor n = number of massless particle species, where the photon currently contributes 2 (due to polarisation). Someone must have published on this. --Michael C. Price talk 09:31, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

I think this section should be expanded.
I'm essentially a laymen (highschool physics and one university level physics paper). I think this article is pretty good on the whole, but what I feel is a very important sentence evades my understanding: "A more precise, but still much simplified view of the process is that vacuum fluctuations cause a particle-antiparticle pair to appear close to the event horizon of a black hole. One of the pair falls into the black hole whilst the other escapes. In order to preserve total energy, the particle which fell into the black hole must have had a negative energy (with respect to an observer far away from the black hole)." Why would the antiparticle have to fall into the black hole? That way, the black hole looses energy and the rest of the universe gains it. The alternative, with the particle falling in, and the antiparticle being emitted, the black hole gains energy and the rest of the universe looses it. Both ways, conservation of energy seems happy. As I say, maybe a bit more explanation would be in order? Bilz0r 22:29, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Confirmed by observation?
One thing I think this article could use (I can't add it because I don't know anything about the subject) is to what extent this phenomenon has been confirmed by astronomers' observations, as opposed to being a theoretical prediction. The article kind of makes it sound like a theoretical prediction...?

Paragraph 3 of the main articles states: "However, the existence of Hawking radiation has never been observed, nor are there currently viable experimental tests which would allow it to be observed." Perhaps this should be qualified by reference to the University of St. Andrews experiments reported here: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-02/ns-llc021308.php Bridgewater (talk) 19:11, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Interesting link, thanks. I'm not clear to what extent they are modelling their expectations or actually making empirical progress, but interesting stuff anyway. --Michael C. Price talk 00:16, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Silly question...
So, I "get" the explanation given, that Hawking radiation is the emission of one half of a particle-antiparticle pair, and that one of the two particles is absorbed by the black hole while the other is emitted...

The problem I have is that I don't understand how it's the black hole that is losing mass from this process, when it appears to me that 1. the matter originates with zero-point energy virtual particles (the energy to create these particles being lost by the vacuum) and 2. the particle of the virtual pair that the black hole absorbs doesn't turn out to give it a net-positive mass from the transaction instead of the net-negative that is asserted.

Is there a simple visualization or explanation that could be inserted to explain the process without resorting to, for instance, purely abstract explanations via scalar fields?

If the black hole is losing the energy to create the virtual particles, in such a manner that it's losing half the transaction energy from the process via the lost particle, I'd understand this better, but as it's explained it doesn't appear the inital energy cost is deducted from the mass of the singularity at all.

~ lilewyn


 * There's a good explanation here: 67.87.115.207 18:34, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Okay, so I read that... tell me if this is completely and utterly wrong, okay? A particle-antiparticle pair appears near a black hole horizon, which would normally be okay even if it's a net energy defecit, because after a short period of time the defecit would balance itself out due to matter/antimatter annihilation. In this case, though, one of the pair is released, one of the pair is trapped, and the black hole has to pay for the defecit in equivilent loss of mass (equal to the total mass of both particles, though it absorbs one) to balance out the defecit... i.e. while both particles are positive mass, they're negative an amount of energy equal to the square of the mass of the particle, per particle (E=MC^2 and all that) which the black hole has to pay for. Sound about right? ~ lilewyn


 * Just identifying who lilewyn is for future reference ... me. :) —This unsigned comment was added by Kylu (talk • contribs) on 23:23, 2 April 2006.


 * Mmm... not quite. If I understand the article correctly (and it was written by an extremely smart guy (John Baez) who admits that even he doesn't fully get what's going on, so that's a big if), the mathematical basis for Hawking radiation is that regions of spacetime with substantially different curvature can disagree on what energy states are what.  Since vacuum is just the lowest-energy state, what's vacuum near a black hole is not the same as vacuum out in flat space.  It's a thermal state, and emits energy into the relatively cooler cosmos.  Since energy must be conserved, the black hole's mass decreases accordingly as a result.  The "virtual-particle pair" heuristic explanation doesn't appear directly connected to the usual mathematical process, but it might be.  Presumably the guy who came up with it knows. 164.55.254.106 19:29, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * My understanding is that both virtual-particle and other explanations are valid ways of looking at it, and that which makes the most intuitive sense depends on the approach you take to working the math. There was some discussion of this over at Talk:Casimir effect and Talk:Virtual particle a while back, if memory serves. --Christopher Thomas 05:23, 12 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm really dissapointed that I'm not bright enough to understand this concept intuitively...
 * On the other hand, I'm happy I'm not the only one with that problem. Sonoluminescence makes more innate sense. :P
 * lilewyn 03:05, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Based on Einstein’s comments calling some aspects of quantum theory incomplete because it would require logical paradoxes, I think he might have similar problems Hawking Radiation. He [Einstein] might politely call [the theory of Hawking Radiation] incomplete and suspect that if Hawking Radiation is observed it might cause micro black hole growth as common sense seems to suggest.  --Jtankers (talk) 03:35, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Einstein thought up some experimental results which were predicted by quantum theory, but which (according to Einstein's intuition) could never possibly occur in reality; these are the "logical paradoxes" you're referring to. You know what happened when we did the experiments?   They agreed with quantum theory, and disagreed with Einstein's intuition.  If Einstein had, in fact, objected to Hawking radiation based on his intuition, it might merit a mention in the article, but would hardly steer scientific consensus in the face of carefully-calculated work to the contrary.   The fact that you object to Hawking radiation, and that you imagine that Einstein might have agreed with you, carries even less weight than that.   As an aside, you must realize that your "common sense" intuition (black hole growth from radiation emission) violates energy conservation?  Bm gub (talk) 14:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Thermal?
As I understand this hawking radiation is pair particle production where one particle escapes and the other is sucked into the black hole. Two Questions:
 * Why is this called a thermal process in the top half of the article? Is heat actually involved or just similar statistical mechanics to thermal systems?
 * Is there some mechanism by which the particle falling in must have negative energy or is it more of a "We have to conserve energy and there would be energy coming out so the total left in there must drop" Sort of an idea

Also are there any observations of this?

Thanks

CaptinJohn 15:17, 11 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Given the context, I assume 'thermal' means 'following a Planck distribution'.
 * I don't know - wouldn't that violate causality? To have the black hole 'pick' which particle to choose so's it won't break a physical law in the future... On the other hand, it's past midnight and I'm tired.  I would also like to hear an answer to your second question.  79.74.220.35 (talk) 00:29, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Inconsistency
The cited source for the phrase "In even more speculative extensions [4], these black holes would not evaporate and might be dangerous." directly contradicts the assertion of danger. As quoted from the source, "However, even if the ball of plasma is a black hole, it is not thought to pose a threat. At these energies and distances, gravity is not the dominant force in a black hole." Either provide a source that indicates danger or remove the false assertion. 68.230.161.164 (talk) 05:55, 26 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't believe that it refers to the "black hole" like object created at RHIC, which is not a gravitational micro black hole. Instead, that phrase "in even more speculative ..." refers to true micro black holes.  This is not an inconsistency.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.248.4.76 (talk) 18:26, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

new section: problems with theory. let us try to do among all of us a proper one
Rewrritten and readdressed all the doubts of likebox with quotes of hawkings on the arrows of time, which seems to be what likebox don’t understand. I recognize I have a short fuse bt likebox is not qualified to erase this article, he is not even an expert in relativity. And certainly it is not qualified to call names anyone. So let us return to a civilized way and try to agree in a non-biased article that shows the many possible errors of this theory given its importance for the future of mankind 76.89.246.73 (talk) 21:56, 1 February 2008 (UTC) This guy erased the entire section without comments 5 days after it was accepted by the rest... again i believe wikipedia should restrict people that vandalize many hours of hard work... Probably a change of 'policies' like the need of '2' people wanted to erase, before it comes to an effect. This is what the guy says in his talk: I am Count Iblis. My mission on this planet is to enlighten the primitive creatures living on this planet (a.k.a. humans) with my infinite knowledge. I also post regularly on my blog. No need to coment further... Please do not vandalize Count Iblis... (apart from that thanks all of you Likebox, Price, etc. for accepting the need to an Einsteinian perspective to Hawking work in this section… we will discover the meaning of it all, whoever is right, but with sound physics and hopefully not risk to mankind… just a bit of patience is what we need and less people self-assured of their infinite knowledge! )… —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.89.246.73 (talk) 23:03, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Reposted and added coda, defining in strict terms what is this theory relevant for... If thermodynamics of black holes is proved experimentally then quantum gravity is possible if not then both arrows, as i believe, are independent and the Universe is a fractal of multiple branes. Obviously the students who edit this section ignore the present state of physics and the on going debate in those terms, as they seem to be fans of old XIX c. theories.

Fantaphysics
I have deleted this entire section from this talk page as it was virtually all totally gibberish that was in no way related to improving the article. It seems we have a lunatic in our midst who thinks it suitable to vandalize Wikipedia talk pages with their warped ideas of reality. Please find something more constructive to do with your time. Dazza79 (talk) 13:08, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed. --Michael C. Price talk 13:40, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

differences between evaporation and radiation, between real scientists and oportunists
I took the liberty of deleting this post as it was long, rambling on about nothing related to the article and sounded like the musings of an idiot. This talk page is supposed to be related to improving the article, not spouting gibberish Dazza79 (talk) 15:24, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, that was certainly a long and interesting post. I did manage to read all of it, and I agree that much of what is presented as physics these days is a mess of disjointed theories. If 76.89.242.7|76.89.242.7 would provide citations, and his criticism in shorter form, I'm sure that he'd have a post on the article page that would not be deleted. It appears that his work is not really OR, but unfortunately to us less informed, we need those citations. I've read many criticisms of Wikipedia, and the most frequently noted is that there are too many requests for citations [i.e. the poster seems to think it's obvious and common knowledge; the challenger is ignorant of those facts], and that when someone posts that 2 + 2 = 4, some challenger comes along and requires a citation [sorry if you don't like my exaggeration example].

I've recently read that CERN is now trying to prove Hawking radiation by using a neutron star analogy, that if cosmic ray produced MBH's did not evaporate by Hawking radiation, then we'd not have neutron stars. What does not make sense is how they treat neutron stars any differently than regular stars for the passage of a relativisitic MBH. They both have roughly the same number of nucleons [actually, the neutron star has somewhat fewer than its original parent star], and an MBH transiting the diameter of either a neutron star or a regular star would pass by the same number of nucleons [since the 'diameter' of such MBH is way smaller than the 'diameter' of the nucleon]. The person making the argument [Mangano, I believe] did also equate near-relativisitc MBHs as being neutrino like, and since neutrinos pass easily through a star, why not a near relativstic MBH also passing easily through a star? I don't see that that argument in any way proves that Hawking radiation must therefore exist to evaporate MBHs created by near-relativistic cosmic rays to keep the MBHs they form from eating stars. Oldnoah (talk) 20:04, 20 February 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah


 * You are mistaken.  Neutron stars have a radii 10^5 times smaller than (say) the Sun.   Therefore the density is 10^15 times higher, and the quantity relevant to particle stopping (path length x density) is 10^10 times higher. Bm gub (talk) 05:32, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with your density calculation. However, you missed the point. If you start out with, say, a star like our sun, and then shrink it down in size so it is pure neutrons [protons and electrons combined so there is no longer coulombic repulsion], the total number of nucleons remains the same [and protons and neutrons are of about the same 'diameter' too]. Thus, taking an infinitely tiny diameter line [i.e. a true line, and not a rope with a diameter to it] across the diameter of the [spherical] star [whether neutron star or Hydrogen star], that line would intersect just as many nucleons in a neutron star, as it would in the parent Hydrogen star, as the nucleons do have a finite diameter to them. While the diameter of the MBH is not infinitely tiny, it's close -- i.e. it is much smaller than the diameter of the nucleons. Thus, as it transits a neutron star, or a regular star, it will pass by the same number of nucleons, and those are the only ones it would be capable of interacting with - if they happened to be in the "exact path" [read, have the proper cross-section for interaction]. These would be few and far between for a very neutrino-like MBH.

As an added note, the cross-section for interaction would likely increase greatly at slower speed for an MBH, just as it does for neutrons [by many many orders of magnitude - why don't you read up on thermal vs. fast neutron cross-section interactions - and keep in mind they are not actually tiny marbles, but mathematical probabilities of interaction] as they pass by the nuclei of atoms [whether for fission, or elastic collision, etc.]. Oldnoah (talk) 19:14, 22 February 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah

As a further clarification, the reason the typical density stopping formula doesn't work is because of the tiny size of the MBH being much smaller than that of a single nucleon. If it were much greater than the diameter of the nucleons, then you'd have those other two spatial dimensions at play [x & y, as the MBH travels along the Z dimension], and the formula would be the correct one to use. Oldnoah (talk) 17:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah


 * Sorry, your reasoning is incorrect, whether you treat it geometrically or quantum-mechanically.  A geometrical line passing through a collection of spheres will intersect (# spheres per unit volume) x (length of line) x (cross-section area of single sphere) which scales as I said.   The quantum treatment, with (as you say) is an interaction probability, scales exactly the same way: total interaction probability is proportional to density x path length x cross section---indeed, that's why use the term "cross sections".   This is a standard, well-known calculation; it's one of the first things you would learn in an undergrad particle physics class; look up Perkins or Griffiths intro particle textbooks if you need a reference.  It's true for baseballs, neutrons, gammas, muons, neutrinos, etc..  The only limit in which this breaks down is that, obviously, the interaction probability can't exceed 1.0 even if the cross section is huge.


 * The statement that the "cross section would increase ... as it does for neutrons" is a false generalization; you have presumably read that, e.g., 3He, or 10B, or 235U neutron absorbtion cross sections increase at low energies, but this behavior is particular to neutrons and to certain nuclei; many, many other cross sections increase (including some neutron-nucleus interactions, all neutrino interactions, etc.) at high energy. Bm gub (talk) 03:28, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, your reasoning is incorrect.

First, the statement that the "cross section would increase ... as it does for neutrons" is a generalization, that is true, but neither you nor I know whether the statement is true or false. It is true for neutrons in many circumstances. It might well be true for MBHs, which was the point I was trying to make. We don't know. We learned about neutrons from empirical evidence, and we'd have to do the same for MBHs I would imagine.


 * If that's the point you were trying to make, why did you say the cross section "would probably increase just as it does for neutrons"? Bm gub (talk) 06:48, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Second, why don't you imagine two spheres filled with equal numbers of large marbles. In the much larger sphere, the marbles are separated by great distance many orders of magnitude greater than the diameter of the marble. In the much smaller sphere, the marbles are all touching each other. The smaller sphere has a much greater density of marbles than does the larger sphere. Now, shoot a BB of great penetrating power [that doesn't stop but passes through each marble] through the diameter of the spheres. The BB would intersect a certain number of marbles in the larger sphere. It would intersect the same number of marbles in the smaller sphere, only encountering them sooner. The marbles across the diameter have all come closer together in the smaller sphere, but there aren't more of them along the diameter line. The rest of the marbles have all moved closer to that central line of marbles to the point of touching them, but the BB never passes through them or comes close to touching them. That is the scenario for a MBH passing through either a regular star or a neutron star.

Now substitute a bowling ball for the BB. Now the bowling ball will hit far more marbles as it plows across the diameter of the smaller sphere. Clearly, the diameter of the particle traversing the two spheres is a factor which Mangano has ignored. Oldnoah (talk) 04:20, 24 February 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah


 * Oldnoah, please simply try out the geometry in 2D---put 100 pennies randomly on a 12" circle on a table, then draw a line across them and see how many are encountered. Repeat for 100 pennies on a 24" circle.   The number of encounters is twice as high in the denser disk: events = cross-section * density * length (in 2D, with pennies on a table, it's not 3D density but areal density, thus the factor of density^1 here rather than density^2 as the 3D case.)  The increase in event rate (effectively) comes from targets crowding in from the side, if you want to think of it that way.  Seriously, every physicist does this calculation 5 times a day; we teach it to undergrads, we put in on tests for incoming grad students; your line of reasoning is a common mistake which would get you marked down.   If you require a WP reference, go to Nuclear_cross_section Bm gub (talk) 06:48, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, I was examining the fact that the area of the neutron star is also reduced by a factor of E10 [making them a tiny target compared to a normal star, which is not the correct way to look at it, since the presumption is apparently that the MBH would be created at the surface of the neutron star]. While such neutron star would be an even smaller target than earth [by about roughly E6 smaller, I believe], it would present a much larger cross-section for capture by about E10, once created at the surface, compared to the normal star. That's why we have these discussion pages, to cover such musings, before posting to the article page. These might well serve as a "trap" for MBHs if they are created at a neutron star surface, leaving no old neutron stars if enough MBHs are created over time and trapped. We would thus have to examine the flux of MBHs being created by such a small target, the abundance of neutron stars and their ages, etc. I presume that is what Mangano is doing, though I have not seen his work. This might possibly be the proof that CERN has been lacking all these years. Oldnoah (talk) 20:33, 25 February 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah

Semi-protection
I have requested semi-protection for the article, since this is getting quite silly. --Michael C. Price talk 17:52, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The article has now been semi-protected. --Michael C. Price talk 17:58, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Please semi-protect the talk page too.Likebox (talk) 19:50, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I 2nd that. --Michael C. Price talk 22:52, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I also agree Count Iblis (talk) 00:33, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I have placed a request here. Add to it as necessary. --Michael C. Price talk 01:04, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks!, I'll add my comments there. Count Iblis (talk) 01:29, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

CENSORSHIP NOT ORIGIANL RESEARCH he, michael this is whatever less silly, now you will tell me that the 'reductio ad absurdum', a logic prove with 2400 years of tradition is Original research... and Einstein's analysis of particles and antiparticles as a simultaneous, present event is origianl research? and I am wilcezk? iT IS obvious taht this is censorship and you just did what obviously people do in your position,censor, and protect your FAITH. Pathetic. Already socrates explained that EVIL=anti-LIVE behavior is synonimous of stupidty, which is what is going on here. Stupidity of people who cannot see the obvious contradictions of Mr. hawking's arguments, eviL=anti-Live people who censor facts that can provoke the biggest genocide of life on Earth. Funny thing is that as Kurosawa put it, 'the bad sleep well'. I have offered you to give you my credentials inprivate to rpove this is not OR, you rejected the offer, and INSTEAD YOU WENT IN THE BACK THROUGH ADIMINISTRATION WITHOUT EPXLAINING OUR DISPUTE AND ASKED FOR CENSORSHIP. I ASK THE REVERSION OF THIS by any common editor with common sense, and the opposite nature, INTELLIGENCE to see hawking contraictions and LIVE feelings, the opposite of eVIL, the true antiparticle that hawking represents. . —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.89.246.73 (talk) 22:29, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I have not censored anyone -- all I have done is prevent you using the cloak of anonymity to push non-consensual changes onto an article in violation of Wikipedia policy, and in particular in violation of WP:OR. Something which has been explained to you by many editors many times.  As for your inappropriate use of the caps key and general ranting, I suggest you score yourself on the crackpot index and see how highly you rate. --Michael C. Price talk 23:02, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia does not care whether you are a "leading time theorists".  If you are, and your ideas are notable, then where have they appeared in peer-reviewed journals?  We will not permit you to add "A reductio ad absurdium disproves Hawking radiation" to this article until you can cite a notable article in a  reliable source which clearly states "a reductio ad absurdium disproves Hawking radiation".   This is not censorship, this is how Wikipedia works; it's a tertiary source.   If you have a new or novel logical/mathematical/etc. discovery about Hawking radiation, no matter how obvious you think it is, it belongs in a primary source like Physical Review Letters, not here.  Bm gub (talk) 22:48, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Black Holes and Baby Universes
I have moved the following two paragraphs from the article, as I think they are not anything like the the common wisdom among physicists, and need to be discussed. Although I see some links to other articles within the paragraph, can you provide references to verifiable, primary research articles, published in refereed papers like Phys.Rev or other mainline journals? Here is the text removed:
 * As a black hole gives off particles and radiation, it will lose mass. This will cause the black hole to get smaller and to send out particles more rapidly.  Eventually, it will get down to zero mass and will disappear completely.  What will happen then to the objects, including possibly spaceships, that have fallen into the black hole?  The answer is that they will go off into a little baby universe of their own.  A small, self-contained universe branches off from our region of the universe.  This baby universe may join on again to our region of space-time.  If it does, it would appear to us to be another black hole that formed and then evaporated.  Particles that fell into one black hole would appear as particles emitted by the other black hole, and vice versa.  This sounds like just what is required to allow space travel through black holes.


 * You just steer your spaceship into a suitable black hole. It had better be a pretty big one, though, or the gravitational forces will tear you into spaghetti before you get inside.  You would then hope to reappear out of some other hole, though you wouldn't be able to choose where.

I think the first three sentences are OK, and the question raised in the forth. After that, I get a queasy feeling, starting with "The answer is...." This stuff has been mentioned as a possibility, but I believe it is highly controversial at present. If it is, then text for the article would have to be qualified to reflect that uncertainty. (Kip Thorne's book, Black Holes and Time Warps might be a good place to start looking. But make sure you find unequivocal support for your statements above, not just a "maybe".)  You also might consider whether this really has anything to do with Hawking radiation -- maybe it would better go in the article on Black holes, or some other place more directly concerned with the spacetime interior to the event horizon.

Thanks, hope you can substantiate it! Best, Wwheaton (talk) 06:58, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Bill: I read your home page. You appear to have a credible background in physics/Spitzer-astronomy. Can you detail why you believe that a Baby Universe would not form, and what the "controversy" is you reference? Oldnoah (talk) 18:23, 14 March 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah
 * Hi! Sorry to say I don't have a really firm opinion myself, being more of a spectator on these arcane subjects, but I am essentially certain the matter has been very controversial.  The spacetime geometry inside the event horizon of a static BH does seem to have paths that connect to other asymptotically flat spacetimes -- I think that much is more or less agreed -- but I believe it remains disputed whether real photons, matter, or information can pass through them.  At the moment (based on User:MichaelCPrice's arguments yesterday in the BH talk page) I am actually in doubt at the moment as to whether static BHs even exist (though I gather from the New Scientist article Price cites that 't Hooft does not buy it), and also I do not see much connection between Hawking radiation and the existence (or not) of other universes, the former seeming to be a matter of the spacetime geometry near the event horizon, the latter of the interior geometry in the neighborhood of the singularity.
 * Anyhow, the issue is really the Wiki process, not the physics. If a fact is challenged on the main article page, it has to be verified by reliable sources (external to Wikpedia), or it is liable to be reverted.  In case of dispute, consensus of the editors (generally those involved on the talk page) is usually the guide.  You might look at the Five pillars, especially the material on WP:NPOV about verifiability, sources, and original research.
 * Anyhow, the bottom line is that the burden of proof is on you if a point is challenged. It is a hard and horrible truth, but apparently necessary to the integrity of the project.  I've learned this the hard way myself, alas, and have needed lots of hand-holding.  So -- good luck!  Bill Wwheaton (talk) 19:18, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Does that mean that Hawking Radiation is also controversial? Or is it not controversial, just the follow-through leading to Baby Universes? Oldnoah (talk) 22:54, 14 March 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah
 * I think is is generally accepted, but not confirmed, and some people still have serious doubts. When and if confirmation comes, Hawking will probably get a Nobel [wild speculation, disregard at will...] if he lives long enough.  But I do not see a strong connection between Hawking radiation and baby universes; maybe you could enlighten me about that.  Why is it you see the one leads to the other?  Thanks -- Wwheaton (talk) 01:10, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Bill:

It just seems strange that most everyone jumps on board the Hawking bandwagon, and claims what a great mind he has [while feeling sorry for his physical condition], when a few of us question whether Hawking radiation is actually something that can exist. Einstein believed that black holes were black, not "hot" and evaporative, and that they only absorbed matter, never emitting matter/energy. Hawking said to look in the Galactic Halo for Hawking Radiation from evaporating primordial black holes. We looked, and saw no signature. We'll look again in May, 2008 when we launch the GLAST satellite.

For example, the information I posted on the Article page on "Baby Universes" was a direct quote from Steven Hawking's 1993 book entitled "Black Holes and Baby Universes", Bantam Books, page 121.

I agree, it is silly, but it is what Hawking himself wrote. Yet apparently when it is not recognized as Hawking's own work, it is denounced for being silly or "controversial".

So the real question is: Is it safe to make black holes on Earth if Hawking radiation isn't real?

Regards,  Oldnoah (talk) 02:25, 15 March 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah


 * Noah,
 * I have read only a little of Hawking's stuff (skimmed A Brief History of Time, too easy; tried The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime, too hard...), but I think that his accomplishments are sufficiently substantial that if he said it, it probably passes the notability test for mention on the main page, with suitable weasel words, maybe, to give due notice about the unsettled state of the understanding of the community. In defense of the Wiki project, we just have to be very careful not to put anything, on the main page for an article, that is clearly wrong; or borderline without appropriate qualification.  Other editors might want to weigh in on all this, as I am really not qualified to judge.
 * Re the LHC, which I guess may be the elephant in the talk page, I know little, but naively suppose the cosmic-ray argument is pretty strong.  If not, by Feynmans's old deep inelastic scattering argument, I envisage a 7 TeV proton to be longitudinally compressed by a relativistic factor of ~7000, so that the three quarks are in a flat pancake.  Thus the interaction should be essentially pure quark-quark I guess, and I do not see that making a BH.  If a BH were made and it did not evaporate immediately, I suppose it would go right through the Earth (v > 12 km/s), or else be captured into an orbit inside.  Then in the absence of Hawking radiation it would slowly grow.  How fast?  Its initial mass could not be greater than about 14 TeV, right?  That corresponds to  way less than a Planck length, and a gravitational capture cross section of << 10-65 cm2, no?  So it should grow very very slowly.  At some later point the Eddington limit should inhibit its growth rate.
 * But obviously I don't really know, and these are just cheap shots. Yet personally I trust that very good people, with small children of their own, have thought about these issues, and found them to be negligible compared to the other risks our planet, and our species, face every day; which are considerable.  But neither would I bet everything on the certainty of Hawking radiation alone.
 * Best regards, Bill Wwheaton (talk) 03:57, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I agree pretty much with everything you wrote. Essentially, it becomes an ethics questions, since we don't have the knowledge of physics required to answer the question whether or not Hawking radiation is real. Certainly if a mini black hole could be created [which has been suggested by several theorists, and even propagandized by CERN as something they'd welcome], and clearly that is not certain [and many suggest, as apparently do you, as highly doubtful], then we should want to be certain that it does evaporate. I don't see how we can at this point. I agree too, that it would likely grow slowly initially, and indeed, it might grow so slowly to never be a problem. Again, I believe we don't have enough information to make a meaningful conclusion. Your argument which I quote ["Yet personally I trust that very good people, with small children of their own, have thought about these issues, and found them to be negligible compared to the other risks our planet, and our species, face every day; which are considerable."] is not sound, though it may be true. The Challenger astronauts, and the people who decided to "go for launch" on that fateful cold wintry morning, had small children, and had the best of intentions for mankind, and were well aware of the other risks facing humanity. That didn't stop them from making the wrong decision. Here the situation is amplified somewhat, as our spaceship Earth carries a passenger manifest of some 7 Billion people, not merely 7 people as for the Challenger. Regards,  Oldnoah (talk) 18:37, 15 March 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah
 * And I in turn have to agree with your point about the Challenger accident, and similar situations. Best, Bill Wwheaton (talk) 19:43, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Noah, based on your citation above, of Steven Hawking's 1993 book entitled "Black Holes and Baby Universes", Bantam Books, page 121, I withdraw my concern about including it in some way in the article. I think the reality of Hawking radiation is less in doubt than the existence (meaning and nature, really) of baby universes, and I still (personally) do not understand how the former necessarily implies the latter, or that the latter are even very relevant to the subject of this article. So I think you might want to move it to the Black holes article if that seems appropriate. Anyhow, I have removed my "unreferencedsection" template above.

Re. the LHC, I think the LHC safety worries reference this Hawking radiation issue, but the LHC has nothing important to say in reverse about HR. Just as a visceral reaction, predicting my personal surprise level, I would give the HR better than 90% chance of being correct, but probably less than 99.9%, with 1% (of being wrong) as my best shot. (Wouldn't even want to guess about baby universes.) As I said above, I would not risk the planet (nor would anyone, I suppose) on that kind of odds alone, but the cosmic-ray and BH growth time scale arguments both seem much more secure, assuming more careful calculations have backed up my top-of-the-head guesses above. That is where I would expect the CERN reviewers to have done it carefully, or else be real scared for themselves and their families. Best, Bill Wwheaton (talk) 18:36, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Detailed balance argument: What about scattering of long wavelength photons?
Just a note: I have been a little puzzled by this discussion, not being clear where it originated or the question that started it. I think it connects to the "differences between evaporation and radiation, between real scientists and oportunists" section that apparently originated in or before Feb 2008, but was clearly cut way back when extraneous material was removed. Anyhow, am I right that it goes back to the discussion of the MBH/Neutron star interaction probability? If not, if someone could replace this with the right link to the earlier discussion I'd appreciate it. Thanks -- Wwheaton (talk) 18:09, 21 March 2008 (UTC)


 * No, this discussion is unrelated to any of the deleted stuff. Bm gub (talk) 18:37, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Surely photons with a wavelength much longer than the Schwarzschild radius will have a large probability of being scattered compared to being absorbed by the black hole? Count Iblis (talk) 15:48, 14 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Sounds reasonable, but would we be able to distinguish them from the background or from the Hawking radiation from the BH, since they would have an awfully low temperature?--Michael C. Price talk 22:26, 14 March 2008 (UTC)


 * My point was actually the following (should have explained it better): We consider a BH inside a big box filled with thermal radiation and assume that the system is in equilibrium. The BH then must absorb as much radiation as it emits and, assuming detailed balance, this is the case at each frequency.


 * If photons with a wavelength much larger than the BH radius have a relatively large probability of being scattered (you would expect this on general physical grounds), then the thermal radiation emitted by a BH should start to deviate from the ideal Planck curve at wavelengths much larger than the BH radius.


 * Now, if I'm not mistaken, the typical wavelength of Hawking Radiation is of the order of the BH radius, so it seems to me that this effect is not extremely small... Count Iblis (talk) 02:33, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Would not that argument apply to any black body (and not just black holes) in a thermal bath? --Michael C. Price talk 20:55, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is well known that small dust grains will radiate less at wavelengths larger than their dimension, simply because they are not black bodies at such large wavelengths. Count Iblis (talk) 22:09, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Then perhaps this is the answer -- the small grains / black holes radiate less at large wavelengths and, by detailed balancing, they absorb/scatter less as well at these wavelengths. I wasn't aware that this was a deviation from being a perfect black body; I would be surprised if this was true -- although I am often surprised!--Michael C. Price talk 23:18, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Hawking cracks black hole paradox
See http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996151

''After nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole destroys everything that falls into it, Stephen Hawking is saying he was wrong. It seems that black holes may after all allow information within them to escape.''

Sombody who knows about this stuff can put it in the article. Walter 09:51, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thats false. Nothing can escape from within the event horizon. Incredibleman007 (talk) 18:44, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

According to this very article, Hawking radiation escapes, at least– and, according to the article posted by Walter, Hawking radiation contains some information regarding the matter trapped inside the event horizon.  ~XarBioGeek  ( talk ) 08:52, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

RHIC Experiment
I contend that this line is not correct:


 * In well accepted physics, there is a nongravitational black hole analog whose formation and evaporation is currently observed at RHIC.

The evidence that RHIC observed a black hole is not at all certain. The article quoted as a reference to this is a BBC news article, quoting the Brown University Physicist, Horatiu Nastase, who wrote an article that is posted in the arkiv.org database ( and ). I cannot find any evidence that this work was (a) peer-reviewed, (b) referenced elsewhere, or (c) verified or confirmed by any other physicists. The only articles in arkiv.org that talk about black holes and RHIC are two from Nastase and one from elsewhere. Moreover, Nastase left Brown shortly after the publication of this article in 2005 (see his web page).

A less scientific point is this. The world of accelerator physics experiements is inhabited by hundreds of people who desperately need to publish (or perish). Papers in the field that are "well accepted" have dozens, if not hundreds, of authors. The papers referenced here are authored by him alone.

This work by Nastase is not well accepted.

Therefore, I recommend that line be removed. Simkiott (talk) 17:44, 29 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The existence of a QCD analogy to AdS/CFT is indeed real physics, but (IIRC) it's strictly true only in some weird QCD limit with massless quarks and an infinite number of colors, or something like that. It's a real stretch to say that a RHIC fireball "is" a black hole analogue, and this particular (uncited) article doesn't justify that stretch.   In any case, why cite it at Hawking radiation rather than Black hole?  I've removed the line.   Bm gub (talk) 14:16, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * While I agree that this line is better off staying in Black hole, there were people challenging the reality of Hawking radiation when I originally put it in and this is the best experimental evidence. AdS/QCD is just the same narrow-resonance/QCD-string/large-N approximation that has appeared and reappeared, except that now it is a fully quantitative theory because there is a known limit in which it is exact. The main prediction is that viscosity/entropy ratio in the quark gluon plasma should match known weirdly low black-hole values, and I have heard that this is confirmed. I don't think that there is much debate about whether the fireball is a black hole analog, only on how good the analogy is.Likebox (talk) 17:59, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Trans-Planckian problem??
Is that a problem really? If the Hawking radiation is traced back to the event horizon, it would be a problem, but as I've been related to the pair creation/separation, it won't need to happen at the event horizon, just near enough that the energy levels of the (from our POV) virtual particles are locally real. This so called problem must have been debunked decates ago! And I've even never read university physics, so any fool (me as an example) can understand it.  Said: Rursus   ☻   17:19, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The Trans-Planckian problem is a mathematical problem--- it is something that puzzles people only when doing a calculation. Why is it that an effect that does not involve the Planck-length or any microscopic wavelengths ends up talking about such small distance scales?Likebox (talk) 18:01, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion: avoid natural units
Currently the article reads:

"The radius of a black hole is twice its mass in natural units, so the entropy of a black hole is proportional to its surface area:"

There are various sets of suggested natural units, and this statement is not true in all of them. Because of the switch to NUs, the equations following this statement are not dimensionally consistent. I would recommend removing the reference to natural units and writing the equations with the constants of proportionality present.

Ordinary Person (talk) 03:45, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. Natural units are not helpful for non-technical readers. --Michael C. Price talk 14:22, 28 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I also agree, we must make the article as easy to follow as is possible. The "not dimensionally consistent" thing is really an artifact of our conventions. We want to have the freedom to use three incompatible units at the same time, the price we pay for that is that 3 conversion factors pop up in our equations. The fact that these are "dimensionally incompatible" is simply because we have assigned them incompatible dimensions (for historical reasons because before relativity and QM there was no way to compare mass to length and length to time).


 * Unfortunately, in schools we are still taught that dimensions in physics are somehow fundamental and even many physicists think that way, sometimes leading to strange results.
 * Michael Duff has tried to explain what is wrong with "fundamental dimensional constants" a few times. Count Iblis (talk) 15:53, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Great link, BTW. --Michael C. Price talk 20:39, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree that it is merely a convention, but it's useful to stick to them. Ordinary Person (talk) 08:30, 29 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Agree, especially for the article page. I think less formal discussions on the talk page might relax that rule a bit, as equations in natural units can be a lot more transparent to understand, for me at least (and easier to write out), once you are familiar with the conventions, but this is only true for shop talk among the initiated. Shouldn't burden the innocent pedestrian with that.
 * Note that the lead sentence Ordinary Person quotes can be fixed simply by changing it to "The radius of a black hole is proportional to its mass, so its entropy is proportional to its surface area." This is even simpler, and sidesteps the problem. Wwheaton (talk) 14:43, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Discussion of Large Hadron Collider risks
This subject has been knocking around several talk pages: here, LHC itself, and Black holes, in particular. I have just proposed to separate the subject into a separate article; see the Talk:Large Hadron Collider page if you are interested. I think it could help to keep some of these other articles on-topic. Cheers, Wwheaton (talk) 19:43, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Error in Overview section in paragraph relating to Planck black body law?
Is the following paragraph correct?


 * An important difference between the black hole radiation as computed by Hawking and thermal radiation emitted from a black body is that the latter is statistical in nature, and only its average satisfies what is known as Planck's law of black body radiation, while the former satisfies this law exactly. Thus thermal radiation contains information about the body that emitted it, while Hawking radiation seems to contain no such information, and depends only on the mass, angular momentum, and charge of the black hole (the no-hair theorem). This leads to the black hole information paradox.

Should 'latter' and 'former' in the first sentence not be inverted, so that black hole radiation only statistically satisfies Planck's Law whereas thermal radiation satisfies it exactly? —WebDrake (talk) 11:44, 17 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I would delete the entire paragraph. Both cases are exactly the same. Neiher a real black hole nor a real black body will emit radiation exactly according Planck's law, because unitary time evolution conserves information while the thermal radiation as described by Planck's law contains no information. There are very few (if not none) theoretical physicists who still believe that the radiation emitted by black holes will not contain hidden correlations which will give away information about what fell into the black hole and how the black hole was created.


 * The information paradox still exists, because we don't know exactly how the black hole will emit such radiation, while in case of a real black body it is straightforward to show (on paper) how the radiation it emits deviates from Planck's law. Count Iblis (talk) 13:31, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Conflict with antimatter?
Would it be correct to say that if antimatter [turns out to] have negative mass that that would mean that there can be no such thing as HR? - on the grounds that all types of virtual-particle pairs are present in equal amounts and so as much -ve as +ve mass will fall into the hole - thus maintaining its mass; or is it the case that being -ve mass that such particles would be violently ejected away from the black hole? [creating a continuous efflux of antimatter that eventually annihilates with incoming matter producing a signature radiation] and if so then what would be the efflux pattern in the case of a spinning hole? --83.105.33.91 (talk) 10:04, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Antimatter doesn't have negative mass. The positron and antiproton in particular are used routinely by particle physicists, and they act like ordinary particles except for having all the quantum numbers (e.g. electric charge) flipped. -- SCZenz (talk) 11:25, 30 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The Wiki article on Exotic matter sub paragraph- Which way does antimatter fall?- & its references 8&9- claim that the sign of antimatter mass is not yet unequivocally established. Ref 8 should read- http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/antimatter_fall.html   . Also Gravitational interaction of antimatter reiterates the claim.--83.105.33.91 (talk) 11:59, 1 October 2008 (UTC)


 * This is not about negative mass but about the positive mass of antimatter coupling to the gravitational field with an additional minus sign. This is a priori not plausible, but it has not been ruled out in experiments yet. It is just like being able to claim that the Moon is made out of green cheese until astronauts go there and verify that it isn't. Count Iblis (talk) 13:30, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I have trouble with this as well. it seems to be accepted that particle/antiparticle pairs are created randomly from nothing for short periods of time. Then they recombine and the net result is, again, nothing. It is the formation of these pairs in the area of the event horizon that gives rise to Hawking radiation (as I understand it). The particle closest to the black hole gets caught and the other escapes? Any way I look at it there should be as many antiparticles as particles falling into the hole, with no net change in mass. How does this make the black hole evaporate? The only way it can work is if the anti-particles have negative gravity and therefore always fall away from the black hole... (202.154.104.194 (talk) 00:02, 10 October 2008 (UTC)): Actually that just makes the black hole bigger so it wouldn't work either.

Hawking radiation vs. white hole radiation
The discussion and content here seems in better shape than the white hole article, so I'll ask here:


 * is it a current theory that Hawking radiation can be the same as radiation from a white hole? Could you tell the difference between an evaporating mini black hole and a mini white hole emitting some sort of uniform material from the far past?
 * What happens when a black hole and a white hole collide? Can the two types of holes occupy the same space?
 * Would such a black/white combination remove the trans-Planckian paradox for both matter falling into the white hole and Hawking radiation emitted from the black hole?
 * Can you fairly say that black holes and white holes are one and the same thing, viewed from the perspective of infalling matter and radiated matter, with the mathematical difference reflecting only that what goes in and what comes out must not be the same particle?
 * If there were truly an infinite number of parallel universes to choose among, is there one in which any given object (for example, each reader of this article) is emitted intact (rarely, even encased by a functioning space ship) from the event horizon as Hawking radiation? Wnt (talk) 22:58, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry but I think this falls squarely into WP:NOTAFORUM if the answers you seek aren't in the article, I maybe would suggest going through papers and literature easily available on the web and then maybe adding the information with references to the white hole article or bring it up on the talk page for inclusion. The reason why it is not advisable to have these types of discussion on talk pages is any response given unless backed up with the same references you can find, would be almost certainly be original research, and unfortunately the vast majority of responses aren't given with references. Sorry Khu  kri  08:37, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Perhaps because of the comment above, Wwheaton relegated his response to my Talk page, but provided the very straightforward and informative (though still somehow unsatisfying) explanation that "Hawking radiation is unrelated to white holes, but arises from quantum mechanical and thermodynamical considerations outside of General relativity, which is the context in which black and white holes arise." Using the phrase he provided in this unsourced explanation ("outside of general relativity"), I was able to find a reference which may be useful to develop the article, but I don't have subscription access so I have to stop there without editing anything.


 * This is an example why it is useful to ask questions about the topic matter on Talk pages, or at least, a lot more useful than the rules-lawyering that I spend five hours debating every time I spend ten minutes researching an edit on an article about politics if I don't want it reverted without explanation. (That last sentence arguably is a violation of NOTAFORUM, except that it rather indirectly addresses Ways To Improve Wikipedia...) Bottom line: I think a major purpose of talk pages is so that people who don't know a topic, or even how to do decent background research about a topic, can point out to the experts what things we don't understand.  I know that where I am better-informed about a science, it is not hard to miss very basic distinctions that are needed to provide a broadly useful article. Wnt (talk) 10:40, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Hawking article
"Black holes behave in a completely random and time-symmetric way and are indistinguishable, for an external observer, from white holes. The irreversibility that appears in the classical limit is merely a statistical effect."

Unfortunately I don't have subscription access to this journal article. In the white hole article, this source is used and summarized with the sentence, "this implies that black holes and white holes are the same object". In my ignorance I take this to mean that Hawking radiation is equivalent to emission of matter from a "white hole / black hole" event horizon. Going out even further on the branch, I wonder whether this means that virtual particles (only) are emitted from a past singularity? Could someone with current access please do some edits to summarize this source and the relationship between white holes and Hawking radiation? Wnt (talk) 10:56, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Equations
Most of the equations on this page are WRONG because the Hawking radiation flux or power should be per particle degree of freedom. In fact, no where on this page is the actual formula for the Hawking flux or power explicitly given, and it should be. The formulae concerning the lifetime of a black hole given here are incorrect because they should include a temperature-dependent weight which takes account of the number of degrees of freedom for the emitted particles. Starlight111 (talk) 04:42, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Could somebody please make this section less ambiguous. The text surrounding the equations doesn't define Kev, and the paragraph directly above the equation seems to imply that Kev is a measurement of time. While, it is most likely a constant, I am not sure on this. Could somebody please clarify:


 * Under the assumption of an otherwise empty universe, so that no matter or cosmic microwave background radiation falls into the black hole, it is possible to calculate how long it would take for the black hole to dissipate:
 * $$K_{\operatorname{ev}} = \frac{\hbar c^6}{15360 \pi G^2} = 3.561 \times 10^{32} \; \text{W} \cdot \text{kg}^2$$ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.138.96.117 (talk) 00:37, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Power source for an "advanced" civilization
It occurs to me that this could be a power source for a not too advanced civilization. The main drawback is a small black hole would be enormously dangerous. There a re a couple of easy way to make a small black hole, in theory. A quantum black hole may be spontaneously created in a high energy supercollider (like CERN) or it may be possible to collapse enough matter in a bose einstein condensate. Anyway it should be theoretically possible to MAKE a very small black hole, and then feed it with raw matter before it evaporates so that it grows to a size with manageable characteristics.

Using the link to the hawking radiation calculator, a black hole with mass 80 million metric tons would radiate about 50,000 megawatts. Thats a bunch of power, enough to power a medium to large city. Unfortunately the block hole might swallow the earth if you lost control of it, but if you put one in safely in solar orbit (where it could not possibly fall in to the earth or the sun) You would have a handy source of abundant power in space.

You would not even need exotic materials to extract the power, a plain old steam turbine generator, like any jumbo sized municipal power plant would have, could easily handle this much power. Either create a large hollow spherical metal water cooled jacket around the black hole, with sufficient size, or a free floating tank which you could park near the black hole to generate power, and move it away if you had to do maintenance or something.

Just a thought —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rich.lewis (talk • contribs) 23:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC).

It would be far too difficult to even make a black hole and the risks would far outweigh powering one city. If you were going to put it in solar orbit then you might as well use the sun because it puts out much more power and how would you get the power back to earth from the black hole ? Also a black hole that small would be highly unstable and would probably explode. To get it even close to stable you would have to feed it a few planets by which time the gravity would be too strong to do anything with it. So as you can see, a black hole would be a poor choice for a power source. Incredibleman007 (talk) 19:05, 14 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Perhaps not so far-fetched, I was also thinking about this. There seems to be a "sweet-spot" with an object with mass around 10^9 kg. Such a body if collapsed to a black hole would produce approximately 10^14 W of power and have a lifetime of around 2,000 years, according to the formulae given. Imagine how this could be done. First we send a robot ship to the asteroid belt. This ship mines materials and creates a solid sphere around a suitably sized (~10,000 tonne) asteroid. Once the sphere is completed, the ship generates a "seed" black hole which gravitates to the center of the asteroid and devours it. The sphere remains, keeping itself stationary with regard to the black hole, and captures the Hawking radiation emitted and transmits this back to Earth in the form of power. The sphere also prevents other stray matter from falling into the black hole (so it cannot expand). Perhaps in 200 - 300 years we will be generating a large proportion of the Earth's power in this way. 189.81.126.225 (talk) 05:30, 26 April 2009 (UTC)


 * If Hawking Radiation is proven, it would definitely be an ideal source for power, because all of the mass would be converted into energetic photons, which is perfectly efficient for generation of energy, than is fission and fusion, that only create a fraction of relativistic energy, versus the direct mass into electromagnetic-photonic-energy conversion process. I disagree about not letting matter fall into it, as one could constantly put base matter in at the rate energy flows out by E=MC^2 equilibrium, providing a clean power source. As only magnetic black holes could be contained from gravity, an orbital black hole around the earth as a satelite would be ideal, and would not decay, if magnetically or slowly gravitationally ferried away from the earth if the orbit even decays as it absorbs exo-atmosphere into itself, if open.  But that is all IF Hawking Radiation could be proven.  If Hawking Radiation is disproven, it still serves as a partial energy converter with gamma ray emissions when small amounts of ordinary non-virtual matter are fed to the black hole.  LoneRubberDragon (talk) 07:46, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Tense
"In June 2008, NASA launched the GLAST satellite, which will search for the terminal gamma-ray flashes..."

It launched (in the past) but it will search for "the terminal gamma-ray flashes..." (it hasn't started yet, a whole year as elapsed)? I understand that this might be possible due to setup/calibration of the craft and instruments once deployed but it still seems like someone mistakenly mixed tense when writing it. 206.47.249.252 (talk) 16:44, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

How does Hawking Radiation hypothesis address the issues.
(1) Considering Black Holes (BH), and the theory of Black Hole Thermodynamics (BHT), known commonly through Hawking Radiation (HR), it is hard to see how a photon escapes the gravity well around the Event Horizon (EH), where BHT HR claims to allow photons to escape the gravity well of the BH EH. Frame Dragging (FD) suggests that frame-of-reference conservation law virtual particle pairs form with zero momentum relative to the frame that is falling into the black hole at a speed asymptotically near the speed of light approaching the EH. So FD would capture the Virtual Particle (VP) with highly localized 1/R^3 or smaller dipole related properties, within the much larger ever expanding quantum system light cone, which is expanding from the VP pair expansion and collapse event, which itself is being dragged into the black hole, the virtual particles with their most important zero-momentum for the VP system, relative to the frame. For VP, they also must be highly short lived, highly localized, and zero net effect, as Conservation Law (CL) dictates, with Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (HUP) limitations, in a zero sum vacuum fluctuation foam falling and surrounding the BH, pulling all of the zero momentum VP pairs and their light cones of virtual zero tail quantum effects of zero sum, themselves. From Wiki: "Examples of these are static force fields, such as a simple electric or magnetic field, or any field that exists without excitations that result in its carrying information from place to place [added: [or black hole gravitational fields]]" LoneRubberDragon (talk) 07:32, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

(2) The words on Plank scale entropy equations and the inverse law of increasing radiation relative to diameter, is easily understood, but it doesn't describe in Emissions Process how it is formed, when the Unruh Effect prerequisite for Hawking Radiation is presented. It is like 1/r^2 infinite velocity Newtonian Gravity model is clearly understood, but the how (in gravitons hypothesis, or even the finite light speed transmission of gravity waves) was missing in the 1600's. The article wording currently doesn't make this very clear to a layman technical audience, regarding Unruh. LoneRubberDragon (talk) 07:59, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

(3) QUESTION IN SHORT: How does Hawking Radiation create the prerequisite Photon, that has the velocity of light, and energy-momentum that must be directed away from the BH sphere, that is required to allow photon escape from the asymptotic-to-light-velocity frame falling into the BH EH, when a zero relative velocity VP is first formed in a relativistic gravity well? LoneRubberDragon (talk) 07:32, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

(4) Unruh effect is also difficult to explain, but related. It seems to indicate that energy can be created by absorbing these Unruh virtual heat bath particles, in an accelerated frame of reference, which itself, violates the conservation of energy principle, for a zero momentum virtual particle pair creation and annihilation, relative to the falling frame of reference. Unruh effect is seemingly related to Hawking Radiation calculations, as a part of Quantum theory in curved space of de Sitter theory of universes. How is conservation of energy violated, by yielding free energy in an accelerated frame of reference, but also the long standing Hawking Radiation by Stephen Hawking? It essentially says that a closed system circled-about (a platform and its thrusting matter) gains E--velocity + Unruh--thermal--energy. It sounds more like somewhere in the calculations, that there is a loss of an equation term in the closed system calculation of Unruh Energy and Hawking Radiation, both. LoneRubberDragon (talk) 07:32, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

From Wiki Hawking Radiation:

(5) "Hawking radiation is required by the Unruh effect and the equivalence principle applied to black hole horizons. Close to the event horizon of a black hole, a local observer must accelerate to keep from falling in. An accelerating observer sees a thermal bath of particles that pop out of the local acceleration horizon, turn around, and free-fall back in. The condition of local thermal equilibrium implies that the consistent extension of this local thermal bath has a finite temperature at infinity, which implies that some of these particles emitted by the horizon are not reabsorbed and become outgoing Hawking radiation"

(6) How does half of a virtual particle accelerate out of the Black Hole? Little particle rockets splitting the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle transient virtual particle pair formation before annihilation? The wording, is, at the least, confusing, in the article, regarding acceleration frames for the VP formed, again, with zero relative velocity relative to the frame-of-reference. Unruh seems to smack of saying that not all virtual particles mutually annihilate with conservation law, with a believeable Heisenberg Uncertain equilibrium break on local time, but without a zero sum on steady state closed system time frames. This, as one half particle is absorbed by the black hole increasing its mass, and the other carries additional energy to create the thermal plank radiation value, while the black hole is considered to be shrinking, to fir the evaporating black hole model. Free energy, or not, to fight the entropy problem of Black Holes? LoneRubberDragon (talk) 07:32, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

From Wiki Unruh Effect:

(7) "The Unruh effect, described in 1976 by Bill Unruh of the University of British Columbia, is the prediction that an accelerating observer will observe black-body radiation where an inertial observer would observe none. In other words, the background appears to be warm from an accelerating reference frame; in layman's terms, a thermometer waved around in empty space will record a non-zero temperature. The ground state for an inertial observer is seen as in thermodynamic equilibrium with a non-zero temperature by the uniformly accelerated observer."

(8) If a hand is holding the darned thermometer, then there is definitely some real hand-waving going on here. LoneRubberDragon (talk) 08:25, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

IMPLICATIONS

(9) Colliders being built to crash hadrons rely on funding, based on the so-called certain unquestionable fact that atomic scale black holes, primordial or created, rapidly evaporate, so the theory should be well founded and understandable, to allow thousands of scientists to spend billions of dollars and euros, to freely crash particles without worry for atomic black holes on earth, e.g. [92X238 + e- -> 91X238], [91X238 + e- -> 90X238], [90X238 + e- -> 89X238], until the natural limit [1X238 + e- -> 0X238], where it becomes a neutral exemplar [0X238] black hole "atom", and would, throughout, be at a plank scale size with mesoscopic quantum inter-particle measurements mostly-preventing any new passing particles from easily colliding-measuring, with the plank-scale-tiny atomic black hole, for a Uranium scale atomic black hole and larger, or even smaller atomic black holes, with all the properties of an atom from the mesoscopic scale, but with unusual spin, magnetic, charge and isotope characters relative to protonic-neutronic-electronic atoms, that such atomic black holes would, additionally, easily slip through all normal scientific mass spectroscopic studies, and if atomic black holes are rare, e.g. 1 in 10^23, they would rarely be detected in science, or even counted in their rarity, compared to the larger noise level of mass spectroscopic studies. Such atomic black holes could even partially explain missing mass, from cosmological models, where fields of neutral black holes could form a field of unmeasured and mostly uninteracting mass, that also absorbs what high energy particles are used to observe the black holes in this black absorbtive nature. Such socialized science, also prevents the minority opinion research on career-depricated atomic black holes research, that could be fed particles to create relativistic gamma radiation from a fraction of the infalling mass, and thus provide a perfectly clean non-fission non-fusion energy source on earth, assuming the atomic black hole could be magnetically confined during the high speed particle bombardment to generate the fraction of atomic level energy, and disposed of safely when its mass becomes large, or put into an orbital reactor away ffrom earth, and microwave the energy back to earth. LoneRubberDragon (talk) 07:32, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

(10) REFERENCES:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_dragging

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_law

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenberg_uncertainty

http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/BlackHoles/hawking.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogoliubov_transformation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LHC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Energy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Sitter_relativity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_field_theory_in_curved_spacetime

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking

LoneRubberDragon SET 236-765-171-732-CA926

(11) An additional apparent problem with the Unruh effect cited for supporting Hawking Radiation, is that a universe filled with matter accelerating and decelerating, would slowly gain this Unruh free-energy, with the bath of thermal photons seen in a steady state acceleration versus Heisenberg Uncertainty bound transient Unruh effect, or even non existent Unruh effect. It would be a good model for an Everett like steady state (relative state) model universe where energy/matter is constantly being generated via Unruh, by continually accelerated and decelerated particle observers. As quoted from Wiki Unruh Effect,: LoneRubberDragon (talk) 07:32, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_state_universe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Everett

(12) "It is currently not clear whether the Unruh effect has actually been observed, since the claimed observations are under dispute. There is also some doubt about whether the Unruh effect implies the existence of Unruh radiation."

http://www.citebase.org/fulltext?format=application%2Fpdf&identifier=oai%3AarXiv.org%3Agr-qc%2F0611062

(13) NAME [Where is the Unruh Effect? New Insights from Exact Solutions of Uniformly Accelerated Detectors]

ABSTRACT [Using non-perturbative results obtained recently for an uniformly accelerated Unruh-DeWitt de- tector, we discover a very different scenario in the dynamical evolution of the detector’s internal degree of freedom after the coupling with a quantum field is turned on. From a calculation of the evolution of the reduced density matrix of the detector, we find that the Unruh effect as originally derived from time-dependent perturbation theory is existent only in transient and under very special limiting conditions. In particular, the detector at late times never sees an exact Boltzmann distri- bution over the energy eigenstates of the free detector, and in the range of parameters of realistic processes no Unruh temperature can be identified.]

(14) So the requisite Unruh effect for Hawking Radiation support, according to article wording, and socialist model LHC funding, against micro black hole research, appears a hypothesis, and not theory, and so, too, makes Hawking Radiation a hypothesis, and not theory, by foundation requisite article definitions. LoneRubberDragon (talk) 07:38, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

(15) REFERENCES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_proof

(16) One more observation, wouldn't this also make all gravitating objects with an acceleration frame, be bathed in such Unruh vacuum virtual photons at a lower level, raining from (the sky anisotropically?) / (the ground anisotropically?) / (all over bathe isotropically?) that an observer is being accelerated by? That is, in normal observation from planets, stars, white dwarfs, and neutron stars, as classical examples, since Einstein Equivalence Special Relativity definitively shows that a stationary gravitational well accelerator observer, and vacuum zero-gravity accelerator observer are both identical? Like the earth, being in a gravity well, would constantly radiate photons at some pico-Kelvin thermal additional background, given the lower gravity and larger diameter than the equivalent sub-foot size earth black hole, also via Unruh for the acceleration frame at the surface of the earth, as the other paticle is hypothetically absorbed by the earth and bounces around for years through matter. LoneRubberDragon (talk) 07:00, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

(17) The way I would look at it, draw a closed system sphere around a specially-constructed gedanken sphere, that perfectly goes black hole, and absorbs all of the matter and energy. In this black box, all of the matter is known by an external observer, to be contained in the closed system sphere, as externally, it appears gravitationally identical like Special Relativity equivalence principle says, for an accelerating elevator in space, versus an elevator sitting on the earth. Suddenly, this closed system, through a magical witch-doctor math process, nonlinearly converts Heisenberg-Nash zero sum vacuum fluctuations into energy that grows and peaks in time. So gravitating objects with closed system spheres that can be drawn, would also break laws of conservation, by Unruh Radiation much more slowly radiating photons through the sphere, as the other virtual photons asymmetrically bounce around the black box system matter sphere. It all says that there are conditions that nonlinearly and nonconservatively split virtual particles in a non zero sum, "free energy" model of conservation laws in steady state sums. I'd just hate to think about an errant particle getting into LHC that is a black hole, that gets shot, absorbs the target, and travels at 50% the speed of light through miles and miles of french or swiss countryside, before absorbing many atoms, falling into the earth, and slowly eating the earth until it reaches critical mass, and collapses the planet, like in the movie, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".  "So long, and thanks for all the fish" , say the finns, and a dragon, or maybe two, who actually care. LoneRubberDragon (talk) 08:58, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_energy_suppression

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_(film)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojydNb3Lrrs

Overall, the Unruh requisite for Hawking Radiation, seems to make a nonlinear-energy-emitting-"transistor" out of any acceleration-framework or gravity-well-wall, all produced from normally zero-sum virtual particle "signals". It sounds disturbingly familiar, as ones who literally and surely prove, for the funding of thousands of scientists and the LHC, for billions of dollars or euros, either way, and over millions of man-hours, that BLACK is WHITE. Those who then promply destroy the earth, at the next zebra crossing, er, at the next errant micro-black-hole in the machine. LoneRubberDragon (talk) 09:48, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcncPpQ8loA&NR=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_hour

LoneRubberDragon SET 236-765-171-732-CA926

Accessibility
I read "Quantum Gravity", by Hawking, Penrose and others in the mid-70s, but I have great difficulty now following this article. Are there no images that can make the topic more amenable to non-physicists? Not to make it populist, but to illustrate the major concepts? Rodhull andemu  01:11, 14 May 2009 (UTC)


 * It is not a requirement for Wikipedia articles to have pictures, photos or images. Also, it would depend on whether or not the picture meets the "Fair Use Rationale."  If it is a copyrighted image, Wikipedia cannot (legally) display it.  This means that a copyrighted NASA image of a particular blackhole, could not be used, unless NASA placed the imagine into free license or public domain. Wikipedia has strict rules on the uses of images. Also some things on this article are theoretical, and therefore may or may not be factual; of which we would have no images of a theoretical concept (at least not yet; i.e. there is no current image of Haking Radiation emitting from a blackhole.) But I do agree that this article needs not only to tailor to the physicist perspective but also to the lay-man. Wolfpeaceful (talk) 16:20, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, almost all of NASA's images are public domain, per Template:PD-USGov-NASA's boilerplate. That said, I don't think NASA is the group that'll have diagrams (they're the spaceflight people, not the astronomy people). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 17:31, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * hmmm I was under the impression that spaceflight and astronomy were related fields of study. Wolfpeaceful (talk) 19:44, 25 August 2009 (UTC)


 * That's like saying physics and chemical engineering are related fields of study. It's true in the broadest sense, but an organization funded to do one will probably not be doing the other. In this case, it's academic: If NASA has diagrams of black holes, they can probably be used with the appropriate boilerplate. My point is that you're probably better off looking for pictures from organizations specifically devoted to astronomy, but do what you like. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 04:26, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Comparison with true black body radiation
It seems to me that the "latter" and "former" in thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/images/button_sig.png paragraph are the wrong way round. Am I right?
 * An important difference between the black hole radiation as computed by Hawking and thermal radiation emitted from a black body is that the latter is statistical in nature, and only its average satisfies what is known as Planck's law of black body radiation, while the former satisfies this law exactly. Thus thermal radiation contains information about the body that emitted it, while Hawking radiation seems to contain no such information, and depends only on the mass, angular momentum, and charge of the black hole (the no-hair theorem). This leads to the black hole information paradox.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathan Hall (talk • contribs) 08:16, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Jonathan Hall, I believe it is the right way around already. Although I'm sure that the black hole radiation is also statistical and hence there is no paradox. --Michael C. Price talk 11:48, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks. Shows how much I know about quantum physics :-P. Jonathan Hall (talk) 09:48, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

asymmetry of matter and anti-matter, and hawking radiation
I have an strange question about asymmetry of matter and anti-matter, and hawking radiation.

Imagine that an Black hole formed from matter, then this black hole evaporate through hawking radiation. Hawking Radiaton is matter-antimatter radiation, it emits matter and anti-matter randomly.

a black hole is formed from matter but evaporate into matter and anti-matter evenly, it affect the symmeter of matter and anti-matter???

Should I post this kind of question here?? You are welcome to correct me if any mistake is found in the above statement.

Jacky To from Hong Kong —Preceding unsigned comment added by HongKongEvil (talk • contribs) 13:32, 17 August 2009 (UTC)


 * If I understand correctly, it should do this, yes. This was one of the reasons the idea of "remnants" was proposed (something left over after the black hole evaporates, containing the right charge, spin, baryon number, etc. to balance out the difference between what fell in and what came out, and maybe also contain the missing information). I think that most scientists just consider black hole evaporation as being allowed to violate conservation of these numbers, but this is something that I'd expect to change when we develop a good theory of quantum gravity (current treatments of Hawking radiation use a "semiclassical approximation", which might or might not produce valid results). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 21:02, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your sharing. I know I am too small to comment on it, but I believe the black hole and hawking radiaton are biggest flaws in modern physics. It is predicted by our theroy but it contradict our fundamental law as well. It's a good for me because It let me know there is something wrong in our current theory.

I do hope the large hadron collider in CERN can really create a mini black hole that we can observe it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by HongKongEvil (talk • contribs) 12:19, 19 August 2009 (UTC)


 * It doesn't produce contradictions, that I'm aware of, so I wouldn't call it a flaw. In fact, Hawking radiation solves one of the big problems that had existed with black holes (you can make good arguments from thermodynamics that black holes should have a temperature; Hawking radiation produces exactly the right amount of thermal radiation for this). The main difficulty scientists have with black holes is that the region near the singularity is difficult to model (there's a boundary called the Cauchy horizon where the equations start to misbehave, under some conditions). Most scientists expect that with a full description of quantum gravity, we'll still get objects very much like black holes, complete with Hawking radiation, but without an infinitely dense singularity in the middle. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 17:35, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry if i'm disturbing your views..but please kindly remember that Hawking had predicted (in my view) correctly.. Here, the black hole might be considered, as i've mentioned below as a gateway or the boundary of this universe....Obviously, nothing was predicatable since the wave function had been theoritically assumed to be collapsed...and i say, this assumption is true...this universe is surrounded by infinite energy (which the religions call as god), and this makes the blackhole to act as a potential barrier of infinite height (I've learnt about the potential wells just a week ago in our college). And ultimately, only tachyons can be expected to escape out of a blackhole...which is now being considered as a flaw in hawkings theory?? hopefully no!! If blackholes have a temperature and hawking radiation is wrong-say; then what is causing the temperature or the entropy?? Then just energy is being exchanged with the blackhole as a medium of exchanging energy between this universe and the ultimate infinite energy!! And now, the question arises, if hawking radiation isnt true, then what about the big bang singularity? How was this universe created? This shows that blackoles is infact a valid concept...--Ganeshsashank (talk) 06:46, 30 November 2009 (UTC)