Hawking Radiation and Particle/Anti-Particle

[chrispegg]

My (very basic) understanding of at least some form of Hawking Radiation is that, upon the formation of a particle/anti-particle pair near the event horizon, the black hole sucks in an anti-particle leaving the non-paired particle to go off into the universe as "radiation."

But what about the times that the black hole gobbles up the particle and lets the anti-particle wonder off? Hasn't the black hole gotten bigger? Not only that, hasn’t it essentially sucked up matter from outside the event horizon once that anti-particle annihilates the unsuspecting 3rd-party particle?

[yenchin]

This topic is probably the most confusing part of Hawking radiation when done in layman terms. Try searching the forum as there are many previous threads on this, e.g. http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=87654.

Anyway, the best semi-layman description of this phenomenon is probably the second link on the page, namely the one written by Steve Carlip (http://www.physics.ucdavis.edu/Text/Carlip.html#Hawkrad).

[tvscientist]

Hawking his very own self, acknowledged that Suskind was correct in this matter. The issue has to do with whether 'information' can or can not be lost. All of classical and Einsteinian physics flat out require that 'information' can not be lost, and Hawking Radiation requires that it is lost, due to odd ball issues of Quantum Mechanics.

The matter is resolved rather easily if one includes the perspective of an individual who falls into a Black Hole versus one who simply observes it. An individual who falls into a BH does not notice a thing. We notice, however, that time has come to a near stop. From our point of view no 'information' has been lost since the individual never becomes part of a BH that can evaporate according to "Hawking Radiation".

I can not support any of this, but only report what others have said.