erosiaart opened this issue on Sep 22, 2011 · 36 posts
Rayraz posted Tue, 27 September 2011 at 10:16 AM
Well, black holes by their nature do actually evaporate..
To explain why, i have to first explain two concepts that are the foundation of evaporating black holes.
**The first concept that space/time has a limited entropy:
**Space-time is in some ways a bit like the harddrive in your computer. It can only store information at a certain density, thus its total storage capacity of your harddrive is limited by the storage area of your harddrive. The limited density and limited volume create a fixed maximum amount of entropy for your harddrive. A fixed capacity to store information.
Similarly only a limited amount of information (matter in this case) can be stored in a limited amount of space/time. Space/time by its very nature has this limit.
**The second concept is that a black hole does, in some sense, really rip a hole in space-time:
**Imagine space time as a rubber sheet. If nothing is put on top of the rubber sheet, it will be completely level and flat. Now if we put an object on it, the weight of the object bends the rubber sheet, creating a dent. The heavier the object, the deeper the dent.
Now imagine travel across the surface of the rubber sheet. The closer you get to the object, the steeper the slope will be as the sheet curves more and more to reach the deepest depths of the dent. The deeper the dent, the steeper this slope will get. A black hole does the same thing with space-time.
Now imagine we put an object on the rubber sheet so compact and heavy, that the steepest part of the slope makes a 90 degree angle away from what would otherwise have been the level surface of the dent-less sheet. You could continue across a 90 degree slope as deep down the dent as you want, but you will never reach the other side or even the center of the dent. Effectively the sheet has a hole inside it.
The same happens in the black hole. Space-time is bent so strongly that a hole is ripped inside it. Once you go beyond the schwarzschild radius - the point beyond which even light cannot escape its gravitational pull - there is actually no space/time as we know it inside it.
**Combining both concepts:
**When we combine the concept of limited information capacity of space-time with the hole in space-time, we can ask the following question:
If there is no space-time inside the black hole, if the black hole is really a hole in space-time. Then where is the information stored about the mass that fell into it?
This is where things get interesting... As there is no space-time inside the black hole, there is only one place where the information about the mass falling into the black hole can be described: *on the very edge of space time, on the surface of the black-hole. *
This is where the reason for evaporating black holes is found. Remember, space-time has a maximum entropy. The black hole compacts matter to its densest state, the maximum entropy of its volume. The black hole's volume can only contain a certain maximum density of matter. But the information about this matter isn't stored inside the black hole (because thats where space-time seizes to exist), but instead is stored on its surface!
We can view the black hole as a sphere, because that is the most efficient shape for matter to take. This is why all large enough concentrations of mass assume a spherical shape. The volume of any sphere is larger then its surface. Thus the entropy of the blackhole's volume is larger then the entropy of its surface.
As a result, not all of the mass of the black hole can be described on its surface! Consequently, the matter cannot be contained within the black hole and ends up being radiated back out right at the edge of the schwarzschild radius in the form of energy. This radiation is known as Hawking radiation, named after the famous Stephen Hawking who thought up the entire concept explained here.
As the matter gets radiated back out in the form of energy, the black hole's mass reduces, its radius schrinks, with its radius its surface area shrinks, which in turn means that more energy will get radiated back out, etc. etc. untill the black hole is evaporated.
The only way a black hole can stay alive is by sucking in enough matter to compensate for the energy it radiates away. If it doesnt, it will shrink and eventually evaporate.
The particles used in the LHC are so very small, that they can only create really tiny, if any black holes. Even if a super-tiny black hole is created in the LHC, it will be so very small, and its gravitational pull so very weak, that it can only pull in small sub-atomic particles.
While there are huge amounts of subatomic particles in a small part of space from our human perspective, the subatomic sized black hole itself would be so small, that relative to its size, other particles are actually very far away.
The gravitational pull of the black hole might be huge relative to its size, but its size will be so tiny and other subatomic particles coming close enough to get caught by the gravitational pull of the black hole would be very few and far apart.
As a result the micro black-hole's mass will simply evaporate away in the form of hawking radiation before it can pull in enough matter to compensate that loss of mass, let alone for it to grow consistently.
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