I’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Boron Zone. It has a range of scientists studying all different topics. Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
Well that is a great question. As far as I know, black holes don’t die, they just keep getting bigger. Stephen Hawking proposed that they do emit particles (now known as Hawking radiation), and so are ever so slowly evaporating – but this evaporation is almost certainly totally overwhelmed by the incoming light, matter and energy that spirals in.
I don’t think anyone know what happens to the matter that has gone into a black hole. It is just trapped and no longer recognisable. Maybe Simon knows more?
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That is a fantastic question!
I think that Matthew is basically correct. Black holes don’t die, or at least we’ve never seen any evidence that they do. Hawking radiation is a purely theoretical idea, and I don;t know if we even have a means of testing whether it’s real or not.
In astronomy we often talk about black holes “feeding” on the surrounding material, so I have a feeling that the matter that gets pulled in becomes a part of the black hole itself. That means that a black hole can grow in size and mass over time. This is the most likely answer I think, but we don’t really know for sure.
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