How do black holes radiate if nothing can escape?

AI Thread Summary
Black holes can radiate through a process known as Hawking radiation, despite nothing escaping from within their event horizons. This phenomenon occurs due to vacuum fluctuations that create particle-antiparticle pairs near the event horizon, where one particle falls into the black hole and the other escapes. The particle that enters the black hole carries negative energy, resulting in a loss of mass for the black hole. Consequently, to an outside observer, it appears as though the black hole has emitted a particle. This mechanism allows black holes to gradually lose mass over time.
2sin54
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Hi. So, as title says, how can black holes radiate if nothing can escape from them?
 
Astronomy news on Phys.org
Radiate what?
 
Well, what about Hawking radiation? Black holes have to lose their mass in some way, but how can they emit something?
 
A slightly more precise, but still much simplified, view of the process is that vacuum fluctuations cause a particle-antiparticle pair to appear close to the event horizon of a black hole. One of the pair falls into the black hole whilst the other escapes. In order to preserve total energy, the particle that fell into the black hole must have had a negative energy (with respect to an observer far away from the black hole). By this process, the black hole loses mass, and, to an outside observer, it would appear that the black hole has just emitted a particle.
From Wikipedia

Wikipedia has a decent explanation in the first couple paragraphs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation
 
Because the radiation is from outside the event horizon, in short.
 
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