Now, i just heard that the particle anti particle pairs that zip in and out of existence every planck second both have positive mass. if that is so, how does hawking radiation work? black holes lose mass when the particle with negative mass falls into the black hole and cancels out some of the positive mass in it? but, if both particles are positive, the black hole should gain mass instead of losing it. what exactly is going on here?
Asked
Active
Viewed 182 times
2
-
See also An explanation of Hawking Radiation – John Rennie Mar 19 '19 at 19:22
1 Answers
0
The quantum fluctuations you are referring to are 'virtual pairs'. One could object that their creation is a violation of the conservation of energy principle, but this is allowed in quantum mechanics due to the brevity of their existence. Their creation and annihilation leaves no net gain or loss to the total energy of the system normally, but when one particle is within the event horizon the orphaned counter-part cannot annihilate with it, and thus must exist. This particle, now real, accounts for some new energy to the system and we cannot draw that from the vacuum, it is thus taken from the black hole; accounting for a very small loss of energy. The creation of the surviving particle requires more energy than the consumption of its counterpart provides to the black-hole. I hope this helps, feel free to request further specificity if needed.
Jon Hart
- 11
-
This particle, now real, accounts for some new energy to the system and we cannot draw that from the vacuum, it is thus taken from the black hole; accounting for a very small loss of energy. The creation of the surviving particle requires more energy than the consumption of its counterpart provides to the black-hole. why is this so? the two particles have the mass and so, the same energy due to einsteins mlass energy equation. so, the energy taken to create the surviving particle should be equal to the energy gained by the black hole. right? – Tac Genis Mar 19 '19 at 16:44
-
The mass energy of the particle is retracted from the quantum field when a black hole consumes it, and one cannot subtract mc^2 from a quantum vacuum; it is the ground state of energy. So not only is energy needed to create the particle that survives, but energy is also conjured to account for the particle that was created and consumed by the black hole. Hence the reference of 'negative mass' because the mass energy of the consumed particle (mc^2) is lost when it's consumed by the black hole (-mc^2). So in total the Black Hole loses 2(mc^2) to account for both mass energies. – Jon Hart Mar 19 '19 at 20:12
-
It's as if, shorthand, once one particle becomes real, the consumed particle is also real. So the Black Hole must account for the energy that created both, and only gets back the energy of one; a deficit of -mc^2. – Jon Hart Mar 19 '19 at 20:14