jimw

A TV program last night quoted Hawkins saying (in effect) that, because a small amount of matter/energy escapes from black holes, they will eventually just disappear (evaporate). This raised a few questions to my non-physicist mind: (1) Since black holes "gobble up" matter, wouldn't the rate of increase be greater than the "evaporation" rate? Perhaps eventually there would be nothing left to feed it? (2) If a black hole did evaporate, it seems it would become less dense during the process and should explode when the gravitational force could no longer hold it together densely enough (the opposite of when a star implodes to create a black hole). perhaps a mini big bang?

Does this make sense? Thanks for any feedback.
Jim