Probability theory as applied to virtual particle creation in vacuo, and
how this affects the effects thereof on Black Holes
Sven Gelbhaar
24 January 2009
In the late 1970s Stephen Hawking contended that virtual particles created
at the event horizon of black holes would cause black holes to ‘glow’ in
that they would exude particles and anti-particles due to the spontaneous
(non-deterministic) creation of particles and antiparticle pairs (and the
gamma radiation assumed to be the result of their re-joining, but that’s
another paper entirely), and that this process would act as a force of
attrition to the overall size of black holes.
He reasoned that at the event horizon, the particle/antiparticle pairs that
pop up spontaneously (this has never been verified, incidentally) would be
separated by the gravity well that the black hole effects (as per General
Relativity). He went on to postulate that the anti-particle matter would
annihilate the matter that comprises the black hole’s core.
What he failed to take into consideration, aside from the fact that it has
never been shown that particle/antiparticle pairs arise out of the vacuum,
is that these random pairs of matter and antimatter would probably be
situated in a random distribution in relation to the black hole meaning
that half the time a matter particle would be sucked into the black hole,
and the other half would be antimatter. So even we presume that
matter/antimatter particle pairs are created in vacuo at random, and that
matter combined with antimatter destroys both (instead of rearranging into
a more stable equilibrium while conserving matter), probability theory
dictates that there would be no attrition, no shrinking, of the black hole
around which they pop into existence completely at random.
Given these counter-intuitive assumptions, all of which Stephen Hawking
relies upon save the core premise of this argument (the even distribution
of matter and antimatter in relation to the spatial coordinates of the
black hole), we can only conclude that the black hole would not in fact
shrink and eventually disappear entirely as it is currently reasoned by the
physics community at large.