All the matter of the universe eventually dissipates as radiation into its surroundings. This is what a theoretical paper published in June in Physical Review of Letters claims research.
The starting point for the work of the researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands was a physicist Stephen Hawking the theory that black holes slowly but surely decay under the influence of so-called Hawking radiation.
Hawking’s quantum physics and Albert Einstein the theory that combines the theory of relativity focuses on the event horizon surrounding the black hole, i.e. the limit where there is no escape from the black hole’s gravity.
Quantum physics according to the universe, pairs of particles and antiparticles are spontaneously created all the time.
Usually they only live for a short time because the particle and antiparticle destroy each other almost as fast as they were created.
Sometimes, however, a pair can be born right on the event horizon, Hawking reasoned. Then the pair does not necessarily destroy each other, because one particle remains trapped in the black hole, but the other can escape as radiation into space.
This so-called Hawking radiation removes a bit of energy from the hole and with it mass. In the end, the black hole evaporates into nothingness, Hawking calculated.
In the new the study looked at how particle pairs behave further away from event horizons.
According to it, Hawking is right about the escaping radiation. However, radiation can also be generated far from the event horizon, the professor of radio astronomy and space particle physics calculated Heino Falcke with colleagues.
In the essential the curvature of space-time plays a role in the calculations. Curvature can separate appropriately generated particle pairs from each other even without an event horizon, the researchers show.
“This means that even dead stars and other massive objects emit radiation similar to Hawking radiation, even though they do not have an event horizon like black holes,” Falcke tells in the university’s bulletin.
“At the same time, it means that over a very long period of time, everything else in the universe will evaporate into its surroundings in the same way as black holes. This not only changes our understanding of Hawking radiation, but of the entire universe and its future.”
Published in Tiede magazine 9/2023.
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