A Brief History of Time

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1. 01

   A black hole pulls everything toward it so strongly that not even light can escape, but even black holes can slowly evaporate.

   A Brief History of Time · 1988

   Black holes, though immensely powerful, can slowly evaporate via Hawking radiation.

   Think of a black hole as an extremely deep funnel: anything falling too close to the edge can never come back out. Hawking discovered, though, that new particles keep appearing at the funnel's edge, straight out of empty space. Given enough time, the black hole loses energy and, in theory, disappears completely.

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