Hawking radiation is the notion that black holes evaporate, losing mass over extreme periods of time and eventually disappearing. But now, according to researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands, that might actually happen to everything in the universe eventually.
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00:00Hawking radiation is the notion that black holes evaporate, losing mass over extreme
00:08periods of time and eventually disappearing.
00:10But now, according to researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands, that might
00:14actually happen to everything in the universe eventually.
00:17They say it's not Hawking radiation per se, but something that works very similarly
00:21to it.
00:22Black holes evaporate because they are so dense their event horizons, or the threshold
00:25around a black hole which nothing can escape from, not even light, cause fluctuations in
00:29quantum fields, causing them to emit particles in the form of a cool light.
00:34But now the Radboud University research team says they've been able to mathematically
00:37produce the same evaporation in pretty much everything in the universe, using a similar
00:42radiation but one that manifests in electrical fields rather than black holes, and involves
00:46the curvature of space-time.
00:48All incredibly massive objects produce a bend in space-time, meaning fluctuations in the
00:52quantum field, just like black holes, with the researchers explaining, quote, and after
00:57a very long period, that would lead to everything in the universe eventually evaporating, just
01:01like black holes.
01:03This changes not only our understanding of Hawking radiation, but also our view of the
01:06universe and its future.