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From: myers@bnl.UUCP (Eric Myers)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: A Queation Regarding Black Holes
Message-ID: <147@bnl.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 24-Aug-85 23:49:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: bnl.147
Posted: Sat Aug 24 23:49:15 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Aug-85 06:05:19 EDT
References: <625@wdl1.UUCP> <9818@ucbvax.ARPA>
Organization: Brookhaven National Lab. Upton, N.Y.
Lines: 29

> In article <625@wdl1.UUCP> jrm@wdl1.UUCP writes:
> >	By definition, the gravitational feild of a black hole is so
> > intense that not even light or other wavicles with velocity c can escape.
> 
> Yes.  By the way, quantum mechanics is not relevant to black holes unless
> they are very very tiny.  Also, "wavicle" is not a real physics term.  Say
> "particle".
 
Actually, quantum mechanics is very important to black holes of any size.
Because of quantum mechanics black holes are actually not black, but
should give off radiation.  A rough description of the process is
that vacuum fluctuations near the event horizon cause a particle-antiparticle
pair to be created for a brief instant (the uncertainty principle) but
one of the particles falls through the event horizon.  The other particle
becomes "real" and can escape from the black hole.  This is how a black
hole would evaporate. (The virtual particle falling through the event
horizon would actually rob the black hole of mass, because energy has to
be conserved on the whole.)

   As for "wavicles", I quite like the term.  Wave/Particle duality means
that waves are also particles, and particles are also waves.  They are
actually neither one or the other exclusively, so they are really something
else, which could be called a "wavicle".  I like that and will use it, 
and since I'm a physicist it's now a physics term.

Eric Myers, Physics Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York
-- 
Eric Myers,  Physics Dept., Brookhaven National Laboratory, Lon Guyland, NY
             myers@bnl.arpa / myers@bnl.bitnet / philabs!sbcs!bnl!myers