The discussion revolves around the nature of virtual particles and their role in Hawking Radiation, particularly focusing on why it is often stated that the antiparticle from a virtual particle pair falls into the black hole while the other escapes. Participants explore the implications of gravitational effects on these particles and the concept of negative energy.
Participants express varying interpretations of the role of antiparticles and negative energy in Hawking Radiation, indicating that multiple competing views remain and the discussion is unresolved.
The discussion includes references to complex concepts such as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the interchange of time and space coordinates inside the event horizon, which may not be fully understood by all participants.
jacksonb62 said:I know that Hawking Radiation is caused by the separation of virtual particles on the event horizon of a black hole, but I do not understand why the antiparticle is always the particle from the pair that falls into the black hole. It seems to me that the gravitational effects of the black hole should effect both particles equally.
George Jones said:Hawking radiation does not come about because antimatter particles sometimes fall into black holes; it comes about because negative-energy particles (both matter and animatter) sometimes fall into black holes. Some popular-level treatments of black holes obscure this, and even sometime get this completely wrong.
Steve Carlip has written a non-mathematical virtual particle description of Hawking radiation which is more challenging than most non-mathematical descriptions, but which also is more accurate than most non-mathematical descriptions.
http://www.physics.ucdavis.edu/Text/Carlip.html#Hawkrad
What happens, very roughly, is this. Energy is associated with time and spatial momentum is associated with space. When an matter-antimatter pair of virtual particles is created *outside* the event horizon, they can become a little bit separated in the time that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle allows them to live. Tidal forces caused by the curvature of spacetime help them to separate, and, sometimes, the negative-energy particle (which could be either matter or anitimatter) wanders over the event horizon and into the black hole. Inside the event horizon, the roles of time and space coordinates get interchanged. Thus, according to what I wrote above, the roles of energy and spatial momentum get interchanged. What was negative energy becomes a negative spatial component of a local (for an observer inside the horizon) momentum vector. Only a virtual particle can have negative energy, while any particle, real or virtual, can have a negative component of spatial momentum.
Bottom line: the whole process can become a real process. In this real process, an observer outside a black hole "sees" the black hole hole swallow a negative-energy particle while emiitting a positve energy particle (the other member of the matter-antmatter pair). The balck hole radiates.