Black Holes Aren't Forever — Here's How They Die

Right now, every black hole in the universe is slowly bleeding mass into empty space — and most people have no idea. Here's the thing: empty space isn't actually empty. Tiny pairs of particles constantly pop into existence and vanish again, everywhere, all the time. Right at the edge of a black hole — the point of no return called the event horizon — something strange happens. One particle from a pair escapes into space as real radiation. Its partner falls in. The black hole pays for that escaping particle with a tiny sliver of its own mass. This is called Hawking radiation. Think of a block of ice barely melting in a nearly freezing room — impossibly slow at first, then faster as it shrinks, until it's gone. A black hole works exactly the same way, ending in one final burst of energy. A black hole the mass of our Sun would take a two followed by sixty-seven zeros years to fully evaporate. Even the universe's most indestructible objects have an expiration date — and their last act is a final flash of energy.