[maxolliver]

Hi to all TOE members and visitors,

Thanks for the welcome Robert. This is my first post to any forum anywhere on the web, so please forgive my naivety.

I've taken a keen interest in science, especially cosmology, for about 15 years. I subscribe to New Scientist and read every popular science book I can lay my hands on ( lay my eyes on?). Books by Paul Davies, John D Burrows, Stephen Hawkings and Richard Morris are amongst my favourites.

One of the unfortunate results of reading about cosmology is that the more I read and understand the more questions I have about the subject. These questions have lead me to Toequest. I hope Toe's intelligent pool of contributors can help me with some of the answers or at least point me in the right direction. I should state here that my maths is limited so complicated mathematical explanations won't help me.

I not sure if this is the correct forum to ask a question but I've got this problem with Hawking Radiation that's been bugging me for months and I can't find an answer anywhere, so I'll just dive in.

I know that hawking radiation is caused by virtual particles becoming real when one partner falls outside the event horizon while there partner particle stays inside. This is suppose to lead to the black hole slowly evaporating though black body thermodynamic radiation.

What I don't understand is why the partner particles that fall inside the event horizon (and into the black hole) don't become real and add to the mass of the black hole, (E= MC^2) therefore cancelling any overall evaporation. Ie. Black holes can only get bigger.

Where has my thinking gone wrong?


Oops Sorry Foas, posted this in the wrong place and don't know how to fix it, aah... hi anyway. I'm a bit of klutzy person. Hehe.


"Seek and you shall find"