COMMON QUESTIONS: *1. "Why does the evaporation speed up over time?"* The wavelength of the radiation is proportional to the black hole's radius, which means the frequency (and therefore the energy) of the radiation must be _inversely_ proportional to the radius. The smaller the radius, the more energetic the radiation and the faster the energy of the black hole goes down. In the last few nanoseconds when the black hole is microscopic, the energy release is absolutely enormous. *2. "What mechanism converts the curvature into particles?"* We don't actually know. To predict Hawking radiation, you have to use relativity and quantum together, which means you have to be _very_ careful. You need some kind of work-around for their incompatibility. Hawking's solution was to use a Bogoliubov transformation, which is non-local math tool. He was able to do his QFT calculations in two different patches of flat spacetime and then just connect them _through_ the curved spacetime of the black hole. It was a genius solution, but it also means there are questions we just can't answer at the moment. We need a deeper model that's consistent with both relativity and quantum before we can find those answers. *3. "Do we have experimental evidence for Hawking radiation?"* We do not. The Hawking radiation being emitted by black holes right now is too low energy to be detected. It's overpowered by all the other radio signals in the universe. All we have as support for it is how consistent it is with the rest of tested physics. The implications of Hawking radiation are also pretty compelling... and quite beautiful in my opinion. *4. "Since all mass curves spacetime, does all mass emit Hawking radiation?"* No. It's not the curved spacetime that's causing the Hawking radiation. It's specifically the event horizon. Since normal objects don't have an event horizon, they can't emit Hawking radiation.
Is hawking radiation basically the Unruh radiation you observe when hovering above the event horizon, but due to nonconstant spacetime curvature there's a residual effect even far away from the hole? If so, then hovering at fixed distance from a nonsingular mass you will observe the Unruh radiation that is analogous to the hawking radiation of a black hole with that mass. What exactly would be the difference between the two radiations and in what way does the event horizon make Hawking radiation special?
@@sarchlalaith8836 A 4-deminsional being would just look through that part of space either before the event horizon formed, or after it evaporated (if their 4-deminsional extent is that great. There's no reason to guess it is. My 3-dimensional existence doesn't allow me access to the 2-dimensional surface of the far side of the moon).
@@siquod no, Unruh radiation is the vacuum energy of empty space - virtual particles - that you would collide with as you fell into a back hole's gravitational well. Hawking radiation also comes from the vacuum but converts the mass of the black hole to radiation due to the event horizon altering the quantum field of the vacuum.
My favorite thing about you is that you take nothing from granted. A bunch of huge name physicists are like hawking radiation is real and you're like... But what about the huge issues in that boiled down explanation? Then you admit to your own shortcomings as an educator and add that you're learning like the rest of us. That's what makes your explanations rewarding. You went through hell to make sense of it so that everyone can. We need more people with your humility, intelligence, honesty, and work ethic. Thanks for what you do.
Yup that's science for you :D. The more you learn, the more you are stunned by how much we 'already know' (or at least the scientists at the moment haha), it's pretty overwhelming. And even that gets overshadowed by how much we still don't know :P
You're not alone! Even the brilliant Richard Feynman once said, "My students don't understand quantum mechanics because I don't understand quantum mechanics." And "I think that I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." So, what chance have mere mortals like us got? The more we can understand, the better but it's clearly not realistic to expect to have a full understanding of quantum mechanics.
In my case, he teaches me enough so that I suspect that the usual "explanations" (which never make any sense to me) are wrong - and that a solution, which I now almost have a clue about, might be possible.
Outstanding. I have already described Hawking radiation to my students using the common explanation you described earlier, and then I finished with "but these are really just lies to children." I explain that it is a model meant to simplify rather than provide an accurate explanation. Your model is far superior yet still explained in a way that students may grasp it. I will reference another one of your videos for those who would like an improved model!
Wow, our school system would be so much better if every subject had master class tutorials by amazing teachers like you, who craft each lesson optimally, and actually take the time and effort to understand what it is they teach.
As a connoisseur of physics videos on TH-cam, this is by far the clearest, most instructive explanation of Hawking Radiation I've seen. Thank you. I know you inspire lots of young people, but letting you know you also inspire some of us older folks, too. Thank you for the great work you do!
I am a professor in Micro and Nanosystems (basically applied physics), devouring your videos and learning new things, or at least new perspectives, in most of them. Keep up the great work! You inspire me to inspire others in my own teaching.
Models are not actually the stuff they are supposed to represent (hence models) So its always nonsensical to look at it through other aspects of what it is trying to represent. That's why models will always be nonsensical what we always need are once that are less nonsensical than the others hence more nonsense
It’s pretty amazing what you can convey in less than 15 minutes. For years I’ve had the same questions you’ve had. The concept as it is usually explained just didn’t pass the sniff test. I recall watching a video featuring none other than Leonard Suskind who has made a large part of his reputation on black hole physics where he gave that same hand-waving explanation of virtual particles forming at the event horizon. It was immediately obvious that, if one of the virtual pair was trapped inside the event horizon, the black hole would not lose mass and evaporate. On another note, I believe that black holes are the key to unifying QFT and GR. They are enormous enough to conform to GR (their existence was predicted by GR years before any experimental evidence was available), yet they are essentially quantum objects having only three properties, mass, charge and angular momentum just like a fundamental particle. Thanks again for the refreshing approach. I always look forward to your posts.
It changed my whole view on black holes to because it wasn’t making sense to me how the mass just stopped being accessible. Then I realized mass can be converted into energy and that’s what happens over a REALLY long time
The thing I like about you is that you START where all the other videos on such topics LEAVE us with. You truly are a masterful explainer. Keep being awesome!
@@ScienceAsylum The Papa Flammy _field_ is everywhere, but that's not the same thing. You could think of it as there being a probability at all points of PF being there. But a PF event can't be in more than one place at the same time, even when the excitation of the nearby fans is very high.
I keep thinking I understand this, trying to explain it well enough so I can properly articulate a related question I came up with, and realizing I didn't really absorb it all. This is the third time I'm watching it and I'm realizing just how much complicated information you managed to fit into a short video while also making it engaging and easy to follow. I didn't even realize how nuanced this was the first time I watched it because you made it seem so simple and almost effortless to explain. It takes real talent to take something complicated and make it simple without making it _overly_ simple, and to make it look almost effortless is even more impressive. And then making it engaging too! The quality of your videos overall has improved a lot ever since you started doing TH-cam full-time (not that weren't quite good even before that) and this video in particularly really impresses me. I like it almost as much as your video on how SR fixed electromagnetism (that's still my absolute favorite as it made electromagnetism as a concept suddenly make a zillion times more sense than my textbook did) but this one is a close second. Keep up the great work Nick! Looking forward to your next video. :)
@@jamestheotherone742 very true. I think I just meant that it answered some questions that were puzzling me about hawking radiation in the first place.
I discovered your channel when I was trying really hard to understand a very difficult concept (Tensors). Every single YT video I watched felt like the person was reading straight out of a textbook. You're the only TH-camr who actually helps me not just understand but visualize difficult concepts. I get excited when a new video of yours pops up. Thank you for taking the time to explain things in a way that is easy and enjoyable to understand. You rock. By the way, cool shirt!
I watch a LOT of physics and cosmology videos and this is by far the best explanation of Hawking radiation I ever seen. Thank you for finally answering some of my lingering questions!
Glad I could help. A lot of research, thinking, and planning when into this video. I'm really proud of it, so it's nice to hear other people appreciating it 🙂
Who needs science when there are so many channels on TH-cam with horoscopes, paranormal, superstition, religion, conspiracy and tin-foil hats that also completely fail to answer everything. All we can hope for is that one day people will realise science has testability, repeatability, and logic as a backround; the others have nothing but faith at best.
Nick, you are a shining example for us all. In Little League baseball, when they train umpires, they exhort the volunteer parents, who, though lacking in confidence, step up to be volunteer umpires, to call the game they see, not the game they want. In the world of physics, where this sensibility seems to be eroding (see Hossenfelder, Lost in Math), you model the right relationship that a human intellect should have in studying and delighting in the physical universe. This helps us all to gain confidence and share in that appreciation and delight. I have to think it takes an incredible amount of work and rework for you to put all these explanations together. I am profoundly thankful to you for doing this work. Michelle and I are also thankful for your account of autism. And also for featuring your wife in some of the videos. Such constructive work can only take place with the help and support of others. Thank you both. We appreciate your effort.
Thanks. These videos do take a lot of work. There's a reason I can only release one video per month, and that's it. Most of the time spent is researching and writing. The post production (editing and animating) only takes 1 to 1.5 weeks.
Finally, a popular explanation of Hawking radiation that deals with the reality of quantum fields instead of virtual particle pairs! Thank you and well done. I'm a self-taught physics amateur who has studied some QFT in curved spacetime, but I've only received confused looks every time I've tried to explain this amazing prediction to friends. Next time I try to explain this topic I will recommend this video.
This makes so much more sense to me than the original description. I always asked myself how the paired particle would mitigate some of energy from the black hole.
I really enjoyed the reiteration of the concept after all the key points were presented - some of your older videos lacked such a reiteration, and it really helps tie everything together and put a bow on your glorious knowledge packages :)
1:20 oh *SLAPS THE TABLE* finally someone said that this explanation is ridiculous, I mean Space Time did it too but what they said was a little too much for me
Yea didnt want to be the party pooper but Matt already explained why the particle version is just an "allowed approximation". Personally I always found it ridiculous because to me that would mean that the antiparticles should have negative mass, and even though there were not many experiment to measure their mass, so far it seems they have the expected normal value for it. (and just to be clear, even if antiparticles would have negative mass one should explain why would the anti particles be the ones which are preferencibly fall into the hole and why always the "normal" ones would escape. In case of a pair production it sounds 50-50 to me, which would mean that any negative mass falling into the hole would be canceld by the positive ones) So then the question, how can you add the mass of any normal particle or antiparticle to a black hole and still make it less massive?
@@CraftyF0X Now it might seem childish but to me it looks like that antiparticles reacts equally with even spinn bosons and in an opposite way with odd spin bosons, and since the gravity particle must have a spin=2 than antiparticles and normal particles should behave the same way with gravity. Also, if conservation of energy is a thing than all antiparticles must have a positive mass
Wow, being obsessed with black holes, this is the first time EVER I finally grasped how Hawkings radiation should be possible. Thank you so much for your videos!
Nick, this is a masterpiece. Science communication has come a long long way since the 1970’s. I still blame Hawking for telling the story using words he knew would be misleading, yet technically correct. Even today, the story at the beginning of the vid is repeated constantly. I also think the work Hawking and Penrose were doing was so advanced that an ‘old school’ particle physicist at that time would not get it. His ‘story’ was as much for physicists as the general public, imho. The confirmation of Bell’s Inequalities was about concurrent with this work, iirc, so there were still a lot of physicists that still believed in particles as little balls of stuff instead of excitations in quantum fields. Best explanation video possible, for as broad an audience possible.
Best explanation of Hawking radiation I’ve ever witnessed. The issues with the virtual particle picture is exactly why I never believed in Hawking radiation either... until now 😅
8:48 200 years in the future: "Nick Lucid discovered the flowton in 2021, he solved one of the greatest mysteries of the universe, he would have won the Nobel prize.
I listened to it multiple times, and it doesn't sound like he ever accidentally said "flowton". all I ever hear was "photon". I can't hear a difference.
Yes, the video did help me to understand this concept a little better. And you're right, the idea of such blemishes in spacetime being gradually smoothed out by the universe is beautiful and the unimaginable lengths of time this housekeeping involves is simply staggering.
Yay....New Studio. The tone and pacing difference was noticeable. I like the slow pacing and sob, it lets me absorb stuff, the earlier pacing went by too fast and I had to re-watch it multiple times. I think you are still thinking about removing the humor, but this amount is always healthy. Keep growing, our best wished is with you.
2:15 “As long as you understand two things; black holes and quantum fields” Nick, I’m gonna have to stop you there. Really though I love the explanation and it definitely opened up some good insights for me.
Yeah, it is a PITA having to limit myself to relativity and q.m. when I have a perfectly working TOE. It's a bit like doing calculus on an abacus. (I wish. Hope I live to see a working TOE that combines both space-time and quantum mechanics 🧐)
Thank you for teaching physics in such an understandable way, truly. I always have been fascinated by how our reality works, and extremely frustrated I couldn't understand so much of it. You are really a good teacher and I am so grateful for your work.
This video is up there with the one about gravity being primarily caused by gradients in time as among my favorites. Your videos make me wish I had followed my interests in science and physics years ago when in high school. If only I’d had teachers like you back then....
That helped me not only understand Hawking Radiation better, but also quantum fields and virtual particles. I always feel like understanding of these concepts for me is always a slow, additive process for me, with small insights building up over time into actual revelations. I'm tempted to call it an accretion, but...yeah. Anyway, great video!
Thank you so much Nick...No wonder why Hawking picked the layman's terms, the logical explanation is nuanced. Approaching this from the wave perspective makes a lot more sense! As always please keep it up!
I'm a little uncomfortable in this new wing of the Asylum, but wanted to say thanks Nick! You have made me almost understand things I never thought I would at all.
im glad i found this channel because as a theoretical physics enthusiast, being showed all these concepts in a simplistic and understandable medium gets me very excited about the universe.
This is really insightful, i wondered how a black hole would decay at the end of the known universe. Also helped me understand what the heck hawking was talking about. Great video overall 👍.
Yes, this very much helped me understand Hawking Radiation a lot more, and a better way of describing black holes in general. I also laughed a couple times which is rare lately, thank you for that.
I had the exact same thinking about why Hawking radiation could never be real. Thank you for explaining this important hole in my gap of understanding away, very grateful for finally "understanding" the elusive Hawking radiation through it's actual concept...for as far as that is possible for a novice in fifteen minutes. AWESOME
You probably lost the imaginary time dimensions: strings can't vibrate backward in time uniquely at the event horizon, not in other areas. Only there. There is no movement through time at the event horizon, but only spatial movement above the speed of light. Just time for some vibrations is going back at the event horizon, they might be split, and take energy from that split.
@@damanybrown5036 It depends on what you mean. The energy that used to comprise what was infalling light does. But the Hawking particles have none of the information of what was infalling particles.
"Black holes aren't material things -- they're spacetime itself." I shared this video with someone claiming hawking radiation is nonsense, thinking that maybe he'd only heard the surface level virtual particle explanation, and he _really_ didn't like that you said that, though he never explained exactly what his objection was. But in trying to reason with him (he was _very_ stuck on the idea of it being nonsense and was insulted that I dared to question his claim of "knowing everything about Hawking radiation"; in hindsight, I probably should've disengaged the moment he made such a claim, but oh well) it made me think a lot about that statement and now it's gonna stick with me. I'm glad, because I think it's very insightful -- the idea that gravity (which is really all a black hole is) is a property of _spacetime_ rather than a force acting on matter is just so cool!
Oh wow. I learned so much from this video. The event horizon particle explanation never sounded right to me because why wouldn't they get trapped in the black hole's gravity well? I never thought about "pinching" quantum fields. Hawking radiation makes so much sense now!
Earlier I had this confusion if virtual particles are just mathematical gimmicks used to solve equations how come they evaporate blackholes but after watching this video I think understand a bit more. They are virtual as long as there's nothing around! Thanks Nick.
Awesome video! I might have to watch it a few times to really understand it. I can't believe I just accepted that particle anti particle thing all this time! Thanks so much!
Saw this same topic on PBS Space-Time. Came away understanding that I didn't understand Hawking Radiation. Thank you for explaining it so well. Hey, you should be a teacher 😉
Finally! Nick has provided an accurate presentation of Hawking radiation! The very first time I read about Hawking radiation and thought about individual virtual particles being pulled over the event horizon, dozens of questions began popping up in my mind. Several of them were exactly the same questions Nick asked at the beginning of the video. Nicely done, Nick! Your’s might be the first physics channel to present this concept accurately, at least the first I’ve seen after watching science TH-cam channels for a few years. I no longer sound like an idiot asking (in Nerd Nick voice) “How does *absorbing* mass lead to mass *evaporating* ?!”, because I don’t say things like that anymore as it was never accurate. Lastly, I’m not sure how I missed this? I’m still subbed, have been for a while, but I clearly missed this one when it came out.
Thank You!!!! You helped me realize that the object collapsing is not the black hole. If dense enough, the spacetime around the object IS the black hole! Big difference!
thats the part still doesnt make sense. the one thing he didnt mention was the singularity at the center of the black hole. when a massive star collapses, its gravity crushes its core into an infinitely tiny and infinitely dense point with zero volume. the event horizon is the area thats close enough to the singularity that the gravity is strong enough to trap in light.
Thank you! Very well done. It always bothered me how people used matter/antimatter pairs as an explanation without explaining why the black hole allways ate the antimatter! Found an explanation a year ago and it mostly flew over my head. This, this was good stuff!
Truly amazing, I was also wondering from where those virtual particles were coming up but you clarified it. Thanks a lot for making this video. Really an appreciable video.
Thank you very much for making this much needed explainer. Ever since I read " A brief history of time" I always had my own problems with this phenomenon.
This was the best demystifying of Hawking radiation I've come across. It actually reminded me of the Unruh effect; after some googling, it appears that Hawking radiation is a special case of the Unruh effect caused by a black hole's extreme gravitational gradient. If you don't already have a video on Unruh effect, it would be awesome if you created one with a little aside about how this is or is not a correct characterization!
Man, I remember when this came out and I watched it and said cool cool, and then I took electromagnetics and signals and systems for my major and that wave description hits differently. Thank you Nick for this awesome video, aged finely like wine for me.
I will now forever see you with your arms over your head saying that line when ever I hear or say "CONSERVATION OF ENERGY SHALL NOT BE VIOLATED!" Thank you.
Been so annoyed of the inaccurate antiparticle explanation for so long, this is a welcoming relief. Very nicely explained. Thank you. Why must others continue to confuse us with explanations that breaks the laws of physics.
I was just discussing this with my son today. I was explaining how it was all to do with virtual particles popping into existence at the event horizon. Thank you for proving to him that his dad doesn’t know anything useful about physics. 🤓 From now on he can watch your videos if he wants to know anything!
This is the most convincing explanation of the topic I've seen to date. Fantastic! The quantum field recap also mafe me realize that using waves to describe particles makes movement easy to explain by propagation. Being an "anomaly in the field", a wave can easily influence its surroundings, while a particle could not. I see a Play button in the background, congratulations Nick!
You modeling the approach to changing one’s mind about something they previously believed is commendable. Whether you had any strong conviction to begin with (which I doubt in this case, but maybe I’m wrong) it sets a good example and is the kind of thing that someone learning about science needs to see.
Thank you so much. This is such a good channel. It removes all the "woo" associated with physics concepts that's present on basically every other TH-cam channel. The virtual particle explanation has always set off my BS detector.
Maybe some people come away from your videos believing they understand something, but not me. The best I can come up with is some vague, uneasy feeling that something very fuzzy might be happening out there; I believe that to truly "understand" one must first master a set of mathematical resources that are very probably out of my reach. That said, I think that you and Hawkings and Schutz may very well understand. Love your videos - keep ém coming!
Remember kids! Quantum particles are always, _always_ waves. No matter what. And also, didn't expect the wavelength size of Hawking Radiation to be that gigantic
COMMON QUESTIONS:
*1. "Why does the evaporation speed up over time?"*
The wavelength of the radiation is proportional to the black hole's radius, which means the frequency (and therefore the energy) of the radiation must be _inversely_ proportional to the radius. The smaller the radius, the more energetic the radiation and the faster the energy of the black hole goes down. In the last few nanoseconds when the black hole is microscopic, the energy release is absolutely enormous.
*2. "What mechanism converts the curvature into particles?"*
We don't actually know. To predict Hawking radiation, you have to use relativity and quantum together, which means you have to be _very_ careful. You need some kind of work-around for their incompatibility. Hawking's solution was to use a Bogoliubov transformation, which is non-local math tool. He was able to do his QFT calculations in two different patches of flat spacetime and then just connect them _through_ the curved spacetime of the black hole. It was a genius solution, but it also means there are questions we just can't answer at the moment. We need a deeper model that's consistent with both relativity and quantum before we can find those answers.
*3. "Do we have experimental evidence for Hawking radiation?"*
We do not. The Hawking radiation being emitted by black holes right now is too low energy to be detected. It's overpowered by all the other radio signals in the universe. All we have as support for it is how consistent it is with the rest of tested physics. The implications of Hawking radiation are also pretty compelling... and quite beautiful in my opinion.
*4. "Since all mass curves spacetime, does all mass emit Hawking radiation?"*
No. It's not the curved spacetime that's causing the Hawking radiation. It's specifically the event horizon. Since normal objects don't have an event horizon, they can't emit Hawking radiation.
Nick: "We need better nonsense."
Copenhagen Interpretation has entered the chat. Meow.
Nick: "No, I said BETTER nonsense, not just MORE nonsense."
Is hawking radiation basically the Unruh radiation you observe when hovering above the event horizon, but due to nonconstant spacetime curvature there's a residual effect even far away from the hole? If so, then hovering at fixed distance from a nonsingular mass you will observe the Unruh radiation that is analogous to the hawking radiation of a black hole with that mass. What exactly would be the difference between the two radiations and in what way does the event horizon make Hawking radiation special?
If a being was 4th dimensional would they be able to see through a black holes event horizon or would the see a complete absence of anything?
@@sarchlalaith8836 A 4-deminsional being would just look through that part of space either before the event horizon formed, or after it evaporated (if their 4-deminsional extent is that great. There's no reason to guess it is. My 3-dimensional existence doesn't allow me access to the 2-dimensional surface of the far side of the moon).
@@siquod no, Unruh radiation is the vacuum energy of empty space - virtual particles - that you would collide with as you fell into a back hole's gravitational well.
Hawking radiation also comes from the vacuum but converts the mass of the black hole to radiation due to the event horizon altering the quantum field of the vacuum.
My favorite thing about you is that you take nothing from granted. A bunch of huge name physicists are like hawking radiation is real and you're like... But what about the huge issues in that boiled down explanation? Then you admit to your own shortcomings as an educator and add that you're learning like the rest of us. That's what makes your explanations rewarding. You went through hell to make sense of it so that everyone can. We need more people with your humility, intelligence, honesty, and work ethic. Thanks for what you do.
Thanks for appreciating the effort 🙂
"Nullius in verba"
Sound like Feynman to me
I couldn’t have said it better
I never take anything from granite.
"We need better nonsense" is a perfect summary of quantum physics.
Don't worry. Reality isn't even real, by how we define it. And if the universe consists of everything within it. Then I'm technically a singularity.
@@angeloftimelessdispair1340 wut
This would be incredibly cynical if it didn't have so much basis in fact.
*also applies to religion
@@georgymusic with religion its like we don't need it at all
Incredible work. You are certainly one of the most underrated science channels out there.
Thanks Jon!
And the same can probably be said about your channel (with maths, not science)
Hands down the BEST description of this I've ever heard.
Sweet set up dude!!
Thanks Jade!
Up and at them
-Radioactive Man
O woah.. I just saw you there at prof Dave explains channel.. he he he
@@Kj16V the goggles do nothing!
He teaches just enough for me to understand complex topics but also just enough for me to realise how little i know about anything
It's the best feeling isn't it. Learning something new but also learning that there's A LOT MORE where that came from
@@YounesLayachi lol yes! Its channels like his (even moreso than my course) that remind me of why i love physics!
Yup that's science for you :D. The more you learn, the more you are stunned by how much we 'already know' (or at least the scientists at the moment haha), it's pretty overwhelming. And even that gets overshadowed by how much we still don't know :P
You're not alone!
Even the brilliant Richard Feynman once said, "My students don't understand quantum mechanics because I don't understand quantum mechanics."
And "I think that I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."
So, what chance have mere mortals like us got?
The more we can understand, the better but it's clearly not realistic to expect to have a full understanding of quantum mechanics.
In my case, he teaches me enough so that I suspect that the usual "explanations" (which never make any sense to me) are wrong - and that a solution, which I now almost have a clue about, might be possible.
Outstanding. I have already described Hawking radiation to my students using the common explanation you described earlier, and then I finished with "but these are really just lies to children." I explain that it is a model meant to simplify rather than provide an accurate explanation. Your model is far superior yet still explained in a way that students may grasp it. I will reference another one of your videos for those who would like an improved model!
The quantum buzz of particles is explained as and taken so literally. Its hard explain to people that its just a metaphor of sorts.
@@Doomfullord how can a metaphor shrink and explode a black hole?
Wow, our school system would be so much better if every subject had master class tutorials by amazing teachers like you, who craft each lesson optimally, and actually take the time and effort to understand what it is they teach.
train the trainers, spring to mind
I don't understand how fast you learn physics AND make videos on them AND make them SO good. I need your productivity in life.
It's a lot of work.
@@ScienceAsylum ❤️
As a connoisseur of physics videos on TH-cam, this is by far the clearest, most instructive explanation of Hawking Radiation I've seen. Thank you. I know you inspire lots of young people, but letting you know you also inspire some of us older folks, too. Thank you for the great work you do!
I am a professor in Micro and Nanosystems (basically applied physics), devouring your videos and learning new things, or at least new perspectives, in most of them. Keep up the great work! You inspire me to inspire others in my own teaching.
"we need better nonsense" 😅 this cracked me up
When he's right, he's right.
Ahah right!
I can't believe nor comprehend Black Balls can bend space-time hard enough
3:34 ~ ref
Models are not actually the stuff they are supposed to represent (hence models)
So its always nonsensical to look at it through other aspects of what it is trying to represent.
That's why models will always be nonsensical what we always need are once that are less nonsensical than the others hence more nonsense
@@adityabhatt4186 it's like boy and girl are more than a friend but less than lovers x'D
I watched this with my daughter. Quote from her. "He's much better at explaining things than my teachers" :)
Than vs then
@@vashon100 found the teacher.
@@MeppyMan lmfao xD
Very true, but keep in mind that will almost always be true of scripted recorded content vs live presentations
@@vashon100 corrected
It’s pretty amazing what you can convey in less than 15 minutes. For years I’ve had the same questions you’ve had. The concept as it is usually explained just didn’t pass the sniff test. I recall watching a video featuring none other than Leonard Suskind who has made a large part of his reputation on black hole physics where he gave that same hand-waving explanation of virtual particles forming at the event horizon. It was immediately obvious that, if one of the virtual pair was trapped inside the event horizon, the black hole would not lose mass and evaporate. On another note, I believe that black holes are the key to unifying QFT and GR. They are enormous enough to conform to GR (their existence was predicted by GR years before any experimental evidence was available), yet they are essentially quantum objects having only three properties, mass, charge and angular momentum just like a fundamental particle. Thanks again for the refreshing approach. I always look forward to your posts.
It changed my whole view on black holes to because it wasn’t making sense to me how the mass just stopped being accessible. Then I realized mass can be converted into energy and that’s what happens over a REALLY long time
Great comment! Thanks :)
The thing I like about you is that you START where all the other videos on such topics LEAVE us with. You truly are a masterful explainer. Keep being awesome!
Thanks! 🤓 I try to fill a need.
Nicely explained Nick, keep it up! =)
🔥🔥🔥
@@jonas314ano Papa Flammy is everywhere.
@@ScienceAsylum The Papa Flammy _field_ is everywhere, but that's not the same thing. You could think of it as there being a probability at all points of PF being there. But a PF event can't be in more than one place at the same time, even when the excitation of the nearby fans is very high.
@kwokshsee how do you define entropy and how do you measure the entropy of a black hole ?
Waiting for you to teach general relativity ;)
I keep thinking I understand this, trying to explain it well enough so I can properly articulate a related question I came up with, and realizing I didn't really absorb it all. This is the third time I'm watching it and I'm realizing just how much complicated information you managed to fit into a short video while also making it engaging and easy to follow. I didn't even realize how nuanced this was the first time I watched it because you made it seem so simple and almost effortless to explain.
It takes real talent to take something complicated and make it simple without making it _overly_ simple, and to make it look almost effortless is even more impressive. And then making it engaging too! The quality of your videos overall has improved a lot ever since you started doing TH-cam full-time (not that weren't quite good even before that) and this video in particularly really impresses me. I like it almost as much as your video on how SR fixed electromagnetism (that's still my absolute favorite as it made electromagnetism as a concept suddenly make a zillion times more sense than my textbook did) but this one is a close second.
Keep up the great work Nick! Looking forward to your next video. :)
Thanks! This is definitely in my "top 5 video I'm most proud of" list. It's nice to know it's appreciated 😊
@@ScienceAsylum Which video are you most proud of?
@@Lucky10279 My sphere packing video with the Earths in the Sun 🤓. It might not be everyone's favorite, but that's ok. It's my favorite.
@@ScienceAsylum What is it about that one in particular that makes it your favorite? Was it just really fun to make?
Mind completely blown but this makes so much sense now.
Yup
+
If you think it makes sense, you don't really understand it.
@@jamestheotherone742 very true. I think I just meant that it answered some questions that were puzzling me about hawking radiation in the first place.
@ゴゴ Joji Joestar ゴゴ Just a statement of fact.
I discovered your channel when I was trying really hard to understand a very difficult concept (Tensors). Every single YT video I watched felt like the person was reading straight out of a textbook. You're the only TH-camr who actually helps me not just understand but visualize difficult concepts. I get excited when a new video of yours pops up.
Thank you for taking the time to explain things in a way that is easy and enjoyable to understand. You rock.
By the way, cool shirt!
I watch a LOT of physics and cosmology videos and this is by far the best explanation of Hawking radiation I ever seen. Thank you for finally answering some of my lingering questions!
Glad I could help. A lot of research, thinking, and planning when into this video. I'm really proud of it, so it's nice to hear other people appreciating it 🙂
Over 300k subscribers , but still seems underrated channel.
Definitely!
Who needs science when there are so many channels on TH-cam with horoscopes, paranormal, superstition, religion, conspiracy and tin-foil hats that also completely fail to answer everything.
All we can hope for is that one day people will realise science has testability, repeatability, and logic as a backround; the others have nothing but faith at best.
Massively underrated, definitely the best science channel out there
facts
Finally, someone with the balls to showcase the actual explanation. Another good video.
Black balls in space
Nick, you are a shining example for us all. In Little League baseball, when they train umpires, they exhort the volunteer parents, who, though lacking in confidence, step up to be volunteer umpires, to call the game they see, not the game they want. In the world of physics, where this sensibility seems to be eroding (see Hossenfelder, Lost in Math), you model the right relationship that a human intellect should have in studying and delighting in the physical universe. This helps us all to gain confidence and share in that appreciation and delight. I have to think it takes an incredible amount of work and rework for you to put all these explanations together. I am profoundly thankful to you for doing this work. Michelle and I are also thankful for your account of autism. And also for featuring your wife in some of the videos. Such constructive work can only take place with the help and support of others. Thank you both. We appreciate your effort.
Thanks. These videos do take a lot of work. There's a reason I can only release one video per month, and that's it. Most of the time spent is researching and writing. The post production (editing and animating) only takes 1 to 1.5 weeks.
Finally, a popular explanation of Hawking radiation that deals with the reality of quantum fields instead of virtual particle pairs! Thank you and well done. I'm a self-taught physics amateur who has studied some QFT in curved spacetime, but I've only received confused looks every time I've tried to explain this amazing prediction to friends.
Next time I try to explain this topic I will recommend this video.
Thanks to Science Asylum for making my morning by posting this video.
And it was 8 pm in India here
So wut?
@@freezinfire åääääåäåääåäääåä
This makes so much more sense to me than the original description. I always asked myself how the paired particle would mitigate some of energy from the black hole.
I really enjoyed the reiteration of the concept after all the key points were presented - some of your older videos lacked such a reiteration, and it really helps tie everything together and put a bow on your glorious knowledge packages :)
Cool 😎. Thanks for the feedback.
1:20 oh *SLAPS THE TABLE* finally someone said that this explanation is ridiculous, I mean Space Time did it too but what they said was a little too much for me
Yea didnt want to be the party pooper but Matt already explained why the particle version is just an "allowed approximation". Personally I always found it ridiculous because to me that would mean that the antiparticles should have negative mass, and even though there were not many experiment to measure their mass, so far it seems they have the expected normal value for it. (and just to be clear, even if antiparticles would have negative mass one should explain why would the anti particles be the ones which are preferencibly fall into the hole and why always the "normal" ones would escape. In case of a pair production it sounds 50-50 to me, which would mean that any negative mass falling into the hole would be canceld by the positive ones) So then the question, how can you add the mass of any normal particle or antiparticle to a black hole and still make it less massive?
@@CraftyF0X nicely summed up
I totally agree xD
@@Nyan_Kitty civilized discourse, right there folks:)
@@CraftyF0X Now it might seem childish but to me it looks like that antiparticles reacts equally with even spinn bosons and in an opposite way with odd spin bosons, and since the gravity particle must have a spin=2 than antiparticles and normal particles should behave the same way with gravity. Also, if conservation of energy is a thing than all antiparticles must have a positive mass
Wow, being obsessed with black holes, this is the first time EVER I finally grasped how Hawkings radiation should be possible. Thank you so much for your videos!
Nick, this is a masterpiece.
Science communication has come a long long way since the 1970’s. I still blame Hawking for telling the story using words he knew would be misleading, yet technically correct. Even today, the story at the beginning of the vid is repeated constantly.
I also think the work Hawking and Penrose were doing was so advanced that an ‘old school’ particle physicist at that time would not get it.
His ‘story’ was as much for physicists as the general public, imho.
The confirmation of Bell’s Inequalities was about concurrent with this work, iirc, so there were still a lot of physicists that still believed in particles as little balls of stuff instead of excitations in quantum fields.
Best explanation video possible, for as broad an audience possible.
Best explanation of Hawking radiation I’ve ever witnessed.
The issues with the virtual particle picture is exactly why I never believed in Hawking radiation either... until now 😅
Thanks, very helpful. Nothing clearer out there in public - I looked up a lot of sites and remained confused until I found this! Great!
8:48
200 years in the future: "Nick Lucid discovered the flowton in 2021, he solved one of the greatest mysteries of the universe, he would have won the Nobel prize.
😂
I thought Flowtons were the inevitable and irretrievable bits of pet fluff you end up with in a glass of water. Maybe it’s a quantum thing after all
I listened to it multiple times, and it doesn't sound like he ever accidentally said "flowton". all I ever hear was "photon". I can't hear a difference.
@@Metal_Master_YT Same.
Yes, the video did help me to understand this concept a little better. And you're right, the idea of such blemishes in spacetime being gradually smoothed out by the universe is beautiful and the unimaginable lengths of time this housekeeping involves is simply staggering.
Wow! I'm back to this channel after almost a year and still this man is nailing in-depth explanations.. Keep going!!
Yay....New Studio. The tone and pacing difference was noticeable. I like the slow pacing and sob, it lets me absorb stuff, the earlier pacing went by too fast and I had to re-watch it multiple times. I think you are still thinking about removing the humor, but this amount is always healthy. Keep growing, our best wished is with you.
I don't ever want to remove the humor from my channel. I'm just trying to find a tone and pacing I can sustain.
@@ScienceAsylum Good, we like your corny jokes. The asylum needs some weirdness.
2:15 “As long as you understand two things; black holes and quantum fields”
Nick, I’m gonna have to stop you there.
Really though I love the explanation and it definitely opened up some good insights for me.
Yeah, it is a PITA having to limit myself to relativity and q.m. when I have a perfectly working TOE.
It's a bit like doing calculus on an abacus.
(I wish. Hope I live to see a working TOE that combines both space-time and quantum mechanics 🧐)
The guitar string analogy is exactly how I learned about Hawking radiation. Makes so much more sense than the particle/anti particle analogy
Sounds like you had a great teacher.
I am sure we would see Nick Lucid in the history of science as a major impactor..❤❤ If not for his contribution then absolutely as a teacher..
Thank you for teaching physics in such an understandable way, truly. I always have been fascinated by how our reality works, and extremely frustrated I couldn't understand so much of it. You are really a good teacher and I am so grateful for your work.
Please make these videos forever. You are the best teacher I have ever seen.
This video is up there with the one about gravity being primarily caused by gradients in time as among my favorites. Your videos make me wish I had followed my interests in science and physics years ago when in high school. If only I’d had teachers like you back then....
Thank you, Nick. That looked really difficult to research and you did a fine job of explaining things.
Thanks! It was a lot work, but worth it.
That helped me not only understand Hawking Radiation better, but also quantum fields and virtual particles. I always feel like understanding of these concepts for me is always a slow, additive process for me, with small insights building up over time into actual revelations.
I'm tempted to call it an accretion, but...yeah. Anyway, great video!
Glad I could help 🤓
Thank you so much Nick...No wonder why Hawking picked the layman's terms, the logical explanation is nuanced.
Approaching this from the wave perspective makes a lot more sense! As always please keep it up!
Virtual particle: I want to cancel myself out
Black hole: NO
Virtual particle: so, you have chosen death in a Googol years.
Vengeance must be served cold, but this is very very cold...
This video really gives another insight for non specialists on this topic which is not easily understood. Thanks for spreading valuable knowledge.
I kind of knew this but in a more Jargon way. This makes it so much clearer and easier to understand.
I'm a little uncomfortable in this new wing of the Asylum, but wanted to say thanks Nick! You have made me almost understand things I never thought I would at all.
im glad i found this channel because as a theoretical physics enthusiast, being showed all these concepts in a simplistic and understandable medium gets me very excited about the universe.
This is really insightful, i wondered how a black hole would decay at the end of the known universe. Also helped me understand what the heck hawking was talking about. Great video overall 👍.
Yes, this very much helped me understand Hawking Radiation a lot more, and a better way of describing black holes in general. I also laughed a couple times which is rare lately, thank you for that.
I had the exact same thinking about why Hawking radiation could never be real. Thank you for explaining this important hole in my gap of understanding away, very grateful for finally "understanding" the elusive Hawking radiation through it's actual concept...for as far as that is possible for a novice in fifteen minutes. AWESOME
Glad I could help 🤓
You probably lost the imaginary time dimensions: strings can't vibrate backward in time uniquely at the event horizon, not in other areas. Only there.
There is no movement through time at the event horizon, but only spatial movement above the speed of light.
Just time for some vibrations is going back at the event horizon, they might be split, and take energy from that split.
"We need better nonsense" Such a Lucid thing to say..
This explanation was so good I finally got the last click “I get it” fragment to understand the basic idea of this insanely complicated topic.
Glad to hear it! 👍
So light can escape a black hole via Hawking Radiation?!
@@damanybrown5036 It depends on what you mean. The energy that used to comprise what was infalling light does. But the Hawking particles have none of the information of what was infalling particles.
@@mathnerd97 so Hawking radiation is electromagnetic waves or no?
@@damanybrown5036 most of it is
"Black holes aren't material things -- they're spacetime itself."
I shared this video with someone claiming hawking radiation is nonsense, thinking that maybe he'd only heard the surface level virtual particle explanation, and he _really_ didn't like that you said that, though he never explained exactly what his objection was. But in trying to reason with him (he was _very_ stuck on the idea of it being nonsense and was insulted that I dared to question his claim of "knowing everything about Hawking radiation"; in hindsight, I probably should've disengaged the moment he made such a claim, but oh well) it made me think a lot about that statement and now it's gonna stick with me. I'm glad, because I think it's very insightful -- the idea that gravity (which is really all a black hole is) is a property of _spacetime_ rather than a force acting on matter is just so cool!
Some people really do get stuck. It's sad 😞
As always your the one person who makes sense, and doesn't just repeat the same thing as everybody else on difficult concepts and ideas! 👍👍
I don't know how I missed this in my sub box. This is so cool and I've been waiting for an explanation like this.
Glad you finally found it 👍
I'm new to this channel but with your explanation about mirrors and my favorite the hawking radiation you really got me. Thanks for your cool videos.
Oh wow. I learned so much from this video. The event horizon particle explanation never sounded right to me because why wouldn't they get trapped in the black hole's gravity well? I never thought about "pinching" quantum fields. Hawking radiation makes so much sense now!
Earlier I had this confusion if virtual particles are just mathematical gimmicks used to solve equations how come they evaporate blackholes but after watching this video I think understand a bit more. They are virtual as long as there's nothing around! Thanks Nick.
Awesome video! I might have to watch it a few times to really understand it. I can't believe I just accepted that particle anti particle thing all this time! Thanks so much!
Saw this same topic on PBS Space-Time. Came away understanding that I didn't understand Hawking Radiation. Thank you for explaining it so well. Hey, you should be a teacher 😉
"We need better nonsense."
-Nick Lucid
Truer words were never spoken.
Is truer a word
That's why Dodgson wrote _The Hunting of the Snark_ - the _world_ needs better nonsense
Finally! Nick has provided an accurate presentation of Hawking radiation! The very first time I read about Hawking radiation and thought about individual virtual particles being pulled over the event horizon, dozens of questions began popping up in my mind. Several of them were exactly the same questions Nick asked at the beginning of the video.
Nicely done, Nick! Your’s might be the first physics channel to present this concept accurately, at least the first I’ve seen after watching science TH-cam channels for a few years. I no longer sound like an idiot asking (in Nerd Nick voice) “How does *absorbing* mass lead to mass *evaporating* ?!”, because I don’t say things like that anymore as it was never accurate.
Lastly, I’m not sure how I missed this? I’m still subbed, have been for a while, but I clearly missed this one when it came out.
El hecho de que haya puesto en duda lo dicho por Hawking me encanta. Eso es hacer ciencia. Todo debe ser puesto a prueba siempre
Thank You!!!! You helped me realize that the object collapsing is not the black hole. If dense enough, the spacetime around the object IS the black hole! Big difference!
thats the part still doesnt make sense. the one thing he didnt mention was the singularity at the center of the black hole. when a massive star collapses, its gravity crushes its core into an infinitely tiny and infinitely dense point with zero volume. the event horizon is the area thats close enough to the singularity that the gravity is strong enough to trap in light.
this is the best channel to watch if you're having trouble understanding a physics concept. your explanations are always the easiest to understand.
Thank you! Very well done. It always bothered me how people used matter/antimatter pairs as an explanation without explaining why the black hole allways ate the antimatter! Found an explanation a year ago and it mostly flew over my head. This, this was good stuff!
Hey just wanted to say I love you and thank you for all the hard work. You do it like no other!!
Truly amazing, I was also wondering from where those virtual particles were coming up but you clarified it. Thanks a lot for making this video. Really an appreciable video.
Thank you very much for making this much needed explainer. Ever since I read " A brief history of time" I always had my own problems with this phenomenon.
Seriously the best explanation of Hawking radiation that I've heard. Thank you
This was the best demystifying of Hawking radiation I've come across. It actually reminded me of the Unruh effect; after some googling, it appears that Hawking radiation is a special case of the Unruh effect caused by a black hole's extreme gravitational gradient. If you don't already have a video on Unruh effect, it would be awesome if you created one with a little aside about how this is or is not a correct characterization!
This is by far one of the best explanation ever.
The best channel ever! Thank you so much for this amazing and funny content. And many thanks to everyone who supports him and made this possible. Love
Man, I remember when this came out and I watched it and said cool cool, and then I took electromagnetics and signals and systems for my major and that wave description hits differently. Thank you Nick for this awesome video, aged finely like wine for me.
Thanks for coming back to leave this comment 🙂
Your explanations are always truely marvelous!!!👍👍👍
I will now forever see you with your arms over your head saying that line when ever I hear or say "CONSERVATION OF ENERGY SHALL NOT BE VIOLATED!" Thank you.
I wonder what the TH-cam award in his background is for.Whatever it's for , he deserved it.
Been so annoyed of the inaccurate antiparticle explanation for so long, this is a welcoming relief. Very nicely explained. Thank you. Why must others continue to confuse us with explanations that breaks the laws of physics.
Released after an update to Black hole image
What a legend..
By far the best explanation of hawking radiation on TH-cam
I was just discussing this with my son today.
I was explaining how it was all to do with virtual particles popping into existence at the event horizon.
Thank you for proving to him that his dad doesn’t know anything useful about physics. 🤓
From now on he can watch your videos if he wants to know anything!
I still appreciate the effort you took trying to explain it to your son 👍
Admit it, underneath you were all "Screw you, Stephen Hawings, screw you ! ":)
I admit, I wasn't really familiar with Hawking Radiation before this, so this was super interesting!
To answer you question at the end, Yes this immensely helped me to understand the mechanism. 🙏🏻 Keep on being crazy!
"In fact I had every intention of this video being a debunking extravaganza"
*You what??*
This is the most convincing explanation of the topic I've seen to date. Fantastic!
The quantum field recap also mafe me realize that using waves to describe particles makes movement easy to explain by propagation. Being an "anomaly in the field", a wave can easily influence its surroundings, while a particle could not.
I see a Play button in the background, congratulations Nick!
You modeling the approach to changing one’s mind about something they previously believed is commendable. Whether you had any strong conviction to begin with (which I doubt in this case, but maybe I’m wrong) it sets a good example and is the kind of thing that someone learning about science needs to see.
Thank you so much. This is literally the best explanation in this universe.
(No pun intended for all the aliens out there)
Thank you so much. This is such a good channel. It removes all the "woo" associated with physics concepts that's present on basically every other TH-cam channel. The virtual particle explanation has always set off my BS detector.
Great job bro. With abracadabra the cooler body can transfer (heat) energy to the hotter one. And entropy decreases as well.
Maybe some people come away from your videos believing they understand something, but not me. The best I can come up with is some vague, uneasy feeling that something very fuzzy might be happening out there; I believe that to truly "understand" one must first master a set of mathematical resources that are very probably out of my reach. That said, I think that you and Hawkings and Schutz may very well understand. Love your videos - keep ém coming!
Now I understand why Hawking himself explained it the way he did! Thanks!
The Coolaid cup was a nice touch.
Way to make an extremely complex topic accessible. Great job!
Thanks! Glad you liked it.
That is a neat and cool new set up! I really love it!
I feel like a professional now 😂
You should really do a tour of this new set up (new books? a globe!? and all of those illustrations on the walls!!) in future videos!
@@ScienceAsylum well, you are 😉
Remember kids!
Quantum particles are always, _always_ waves. No matter what.
And also, didn't expect the wavelength size of Hawking Radiation to be that gigantic
Well it depends on the size of the black hole. If your black hole is a nanometer wide, 80 Schwarzschild radii is firmly in the extreme UV spectrum
This is the most appropriate description of Quantum Fields bro. Love your work!
'What's a little universe hopping, between friends?" - Peter Bishop