{"id":97572,"date":"2025-05-13T08:31:13","date_gmt":"2025-05-13T08:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/97572\/"},"modified":"2025-05-13T08:31:13","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T08:31:13","slug":"objects-in-our-universe-evaporate-faster-than-thought-scientists-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/97572\/","title":{"rendered":"Objects in Our Universe Evaporate Faster than Thought, Scientists Say"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a 2023 paper, Professor Heino Falcke and his colleagues at Radboud University showed<\/a> that not only black holes, but also all other objects in the Universe can \u2018evaporate\u2019 via a process akin to Hawking radiation. After that publication, the authors received many questions about how long the process would take. In a new study, they calculated that the end of the Universe is about 1078 years away, if only Hawking-like radiation is taken into account. This is the time it takes for white dwarfs \u2014 the most persistent celestial bodies \u2014 to decay via Hawking-like radiation. Previous studies, which did not take this effect into account, put the lifetime of white dwarfs at 101100 years.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"An<\/a><\/p>\n

An artist\u2019s impression of a neutron star that is \u2018evaporating\u2019 slowly via Hawking-like radiation. Image credit: Dani\u00eblle Futselaar \/ Artsource.nl.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the ultimate end of the Universe comes much sooner than expected, but fortunately it still takes a very long time,\u201d Professor Falcke said.<\/p>\n

In 1975, physicist Stephen Hawking postulated that, contrary to the theory of relativity, particles and radiation could escape from a black hole.<\/p>\n

At the edge of a black hole, two temporary particles can form, and before they merge, one particle is sucked into the black hole and the other particle escapes.<\/p>\n

One of the consequences of Hawking radiation is that a black hole very slowly decays into particles and radiation.<\/p>\n

This contradicts Albert Einstein\u2019s theory of relativity, which says that black holes can only grow.<\/p>\n

Professor Falcke and co-authors calculated that the process of Hawking radiation theoretically also applies to other objects with a gravitational field.<\/p>\n

The calculations further showed that the \u2018evaporation time\u2019 of an object depends only on its density.<\/p>\n

To the researchers\u2019 surprise, neutron stars and stellar black holes take the same amount of time to decay: 1067 years.<\/p>\n

This was unexpected because black holes have a stronger gravitational field, which should cause them to \u2018evaporate\u2019 faster.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut black holes have no surface,\u201d said Dr. Michael Wondrak, a postdoctoral researcher at Radboud University.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey reabsorb some of their own radiation which inhibits the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we were at it anyway, we also calculated how long it takes for the Moon and a human to evaporate via Hawking-like radiation: 1090 years,\u201d the authors said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, there are other processes that may cause humans and the Moon to disappear faster than calculated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe research is an exciting collaboration of different disciplines and that combining astrophysics, quantum physics and mathematics leads to new insights,\u201d said Radboud University\u2019s Professor Walter van Suijlekom.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy asking these kinds of questions and looking at extreme cases, we want to better understand the theory, and perhaps one day, we unravel the mystery of Hawking radiation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new paper<\/a> will be published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

Heino Falcke et al. 2025. An upper limit to the lifetime of stellar remnants from gravitational pair production. JCAP, in press; arXiv: 2410.14734<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a 2023 paper, Professor Heino Falcke and his colleagues at Radboud University showed that not only black…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3845],"tags":[44871,45440,74,70,6682,16,15,6684,45441],"class_list":{"0":"post-97572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-hawking-radiation","9":"tag-neutron-star","10":"tag-physics","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-star","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-universe","16":"tag-white-dwarf"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114499596082074592","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}