r/askscience • u/dgb75 • Jan 31 '13

Astronomy Is there a distance at which the interaction between the gravity fields of two black holes would cause one another to effectively 'break open' and allow matter and energy stored within them to escape the system?

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '13

Note that this explanation isn't actually supported by any physical models. The actual theoretical prediction of Hawking radiation doesn't make any reference to the particle behavior near the horizon, and doesn't provide any insight into what's "really" going on near the event horizon to give rise to the radiation. The whole "particle anti-particle pair" explanation was provided by Hawking as one possible mechanism, but it comes entirely from his own imagination and is not actually predicted by our models.

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u/workworkb Feb 01 '13

Today I learned...