What is the name of the hypothetical radiation emitted by black holes because of quantum effects?

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Hawking radiation is the hypothetical thermal radiation emitted by black holes because of quantum effects.

Stephen Hawking predicted the effect in 1974 by combining ideas from quantum field theory, general relativity, and thermodynamics. In the standard description, quantum fields near an event horizon give a distant observer a thermal spectrum associated with a temperature.

The temperature is inversely proportional to black-hole mass. Stellar and supermassive black holes therefore have extraordinarily low temperatures, far below the cosmic microwave background, making their radiation effectively impossible to detect directly.

Hawking radiation does not mean that ordinary light escapes from inside the event horizon. Instead, it arises from the behaviour of quantum fields in curved spacetime outside and near the horizon. The prediction creates the black-hole information problem because evaporation appears to erase information unless a deeper theory resolves the conflict.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026

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