Hawking radiation

British  

noun

1. astronomy the emission of particles by a black hole. Pairs of virtual particles in the intense gravitational field around a black hole may live long enough for one to move outward when the other is pulled into the black hole, making it appear that the black hole is emitting radiation

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Hawking radiation Scientific  

1. A form of radiation believed to emanate from black holes, emerging from the region just beyond the black hole's event horizon (from which no radiation can emerge). Pairs of virtual particles and antiparticles, created naturally in the vacuum fluctuation near the black hole, are split apart, one particle falling into the black hole and the other radiating away. The energy lost to such radiated particles is believed to come from the mass of the black hole.

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Etymology

Origin of Hawking radiation

C20: discovered by Stephen _Hawking

Example Sentences

If they become hot enough, they can emit particles through a process now known as Hawking radiation.

From Science Daily • Apr. 8, 2026

"As PBHs evaporate, they become ever lighter, and so hotter, emitting even more radiation in a runaway process until explosion. It's that Hawking radiation that our telescopes can detect."

From Science Daily • Apr. 8, 2026

In 2014, Engelhardt and Aron Wall figured out a way to calculate the extremal surface area of a black hole that is subject to the kind of quantum corrections that cause Hawking radiation.

From Scientific American • Nov. 30, 2022

We can measure the lack of information—or the randomness—in the Hawking radiation by thinking about the amount of entanglement between the radiation and the black hole.

From Scientific American • Aug. 22, 2022

Abedi and his colleagues theorize that gravitational waves interacting with a black hole’s event horizon should similarly stimulate the production of Hawking radiation to levels that far exceed spontaneous emissions, thus making it detectable.

From Scientific American • Jan. 26, 2022