this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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Well, its kind of a matter of debate really on the black holes, and its in regard to the law of conservation of information. I'll freely admit, we are getting to the edge of my understanding here, but essentially black holes very nature of being inescapable by anything means that information, once inside, is permanently lost.
The reason hawking radiation was such a big deal is that it found a way for this information to potentially be released into the universe once again. That radiation is actually a pair of "virtual particles" (which aren't real particles, more a mathematical trick to describe complex interactions between different fields and their particles). One of the particles "pops in" to existence on the inside of the event horizon and one on the outside, thus separating the pair. One falls in, one escapes. But since they didn't annihilate the energy that the now real particle has must come from the black hole, hence, the energy has escaped the black hole.
Now, is that "action" a reaction, or is it a brand new action with no inciting incident? I dont have an answer, and its up to speculation because hawking radiation may or may not even exist. But its our best guess.
I mean, action and reaction aren't rigorously defined concepts. When a nucleus spontaneously decays, you could just as well say that's an action with no reaction by that measure, but it happens all over the place. Vacuum polarisation from an electromagnetic field is even closer.
While I would agree, both of those are theoretical - just like my example. The truth is we haven't, and can't, test these things and see their mechanisms take place because of their timescales. But it is a really fun thought experiment