It turns out that a dramatic break in the event horizon might not be all that critical to this process – a steep enough slope in space-time bending can do the same. The study’s authors are astrophysicists Michael Vondrak, Walter van Suylekom and Heino Falke of Radboud University in the Netherlands.

Why do black holes disappear?

Hawking radiation or something very similar may not be limited to black holes. It can happen anywhere, which means the universe is evaporating very slowly before our eyes.

We show that in addition to the well-known Hawking radiation, there is also a new form of radiation,
– says Michael Vondrak.

Hawking radiation is something we haven’t been able to observe until now, but theory and experiments point to the possibility of it happening. Here is a very simplified explanation of how it works. If you know anything about black holes, it’s probably because they’re “space vacuums” sucking up everything around them. These space monsters are incredibly dense: so much mass compressed into a very, very small space. In such a dense object, the gravitational force becomes so strong that it becomes impossible to escape from it – not even light can leave the event horizon.

Hawking showed mathematically that event horizons can interfere with the complex mix of fluctuations that vibrate in the chaos of quantum fields. Waves that would normally annihilate each other no longer do this, causing an imbalance between the probabilities and producing new high-energy particles near the event horizon that rapidly absorb a large amount of the black hole’s energy and cause the dense object to annihilate. quickly disappears.

A similar Schwinger effect occurs in electric fields where sufficiently strong fluctuations in the electric quantum field can upset the balance of electron-positron particles. However, the Schwinger effect does not require an event horizon; it just takes an incredibly strong field.

This also applies to other objects

Vondrak and colleagues mathematically reproduced the same effect under different gravitational conditions. They showed that far beyond the black hole, the distortion of space-time plays a large role in the creation of radiation. There, the particles are already separated by the tidal forces of the gravitational field.

Anything large or dense enough can cause significant distortions in space-time. The gravitational field of these objects causes space-time to bend around them. Black holes are the most extreme example, but space-time also warps around dense dead stars like neutron stars and white dwarfs, and extremely massive objects like galaxy clusters.

The researchers found that in these scenarios, gravity can influence fluctuations in quantum fields enough to create new particles very similar to Hawking radiation without requiring an event horizon catalyst.

For a very long time, this will cause everything in the universe to evaporate, similar to black holes. This is changing not only our understanding of Hawking radiation, but also our view of the universe and its future.
– summarize the researchers.

However, there is nothing to worry about in the near future. A black hole with an event horizon of only 6 kilometers in diameter (its mass would be equal to the mass of the Sun) would take 1064 years to evaporate. But in some places, black holes are so huge in size and there are so many stars in space that it would take billions of years for the entire universe to form.