Why do black holes evaporate?

OK, I have a book here (Universe in a nutshell, by Stephen Hawking). In it he talks about how he discovered that black holes evaporate because of Hawking radiation (but he didn't call it that).
When a virtual particle pair is created near the event horizon of a black hole, sometimes one gets pulled in while it's partner escapes. Now he states that this makes it appear that the black hole is emitting particles making it lose mass.
But if the other particle is falling into the black hole then how the hell is it losing mass?! Especially when it only appears to be losing mass because of the particle being emitted.

Oh, and he talks about determinism a little. He says this makes it so things don't look so good for determinists because information is lost when the particle falls into the black hole. But all you have to do is observe the particle that escaped right? Because we know they have to have opposite spin, so look at the particle that escapes, and you know it's spin, so then you know the spin of the other one in the black hole.
He says you lose information though because you can't predict what it's spin will be, but you couldn't without looking at it anyway! So just look at it and you know the spin of the other particle, and information hasn't been lost.
I'm not saying whether I believe in determinism or not, I'm just saying this doesn't prove anything about determinism.

Maybe I'm missing something. Can someone explain?

 

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OK then. Lets see what you come up with.
I'm mainly interested in the topic subject though. Why do they think that black holes evaporate? I used to just accept it, but after I heard the explanation from the man himself, it sounds like there's a few holes in his logic...

 

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The mechanism of black hole "evaporation" is theorized to result from quantum vacuum fluctuations--momentary, spontaneous creation of particle-antiparticle pairings near the blackhole's event horizon.

Once the particle pair appears in spacetime and begins to express its dual particle identity, one particle passes across the event horizon and the other escapes the area, carrying away with it some of the energy/mass of the blackhole and its singularity.

The interaction of the Event Horizon and the quantum vacuum converts quantum vacuum & gravitational energies into direct mass/energy radiation.

 

Note: My understanding is that the virtual particle pair components each are moving at the speed of light when created, thus is the one not lost over the event horizon able to leave the area.

 

Dosen't it also have somthing to do with the fact that the uncertainty principle allows for one of the particles in the virtual pair to borrow enough energy to go faster than light?

 

The Uncertainty Principle implies that the very attempt to know what's really going on in Nature changes Nature's behavior: that Nature is altered by the act of observing it.

The particle pair is noticed--observed--by the event horizon, thereby are the paired particles released from predictable behavior (perhaps appearing to travel faster than light, though C is good enough).

 

That's what my mistake was. Thank you.
Mr. G, you just repeated what I said, and what Stephen Hawking said.
Thanks James. I forgot, obviously one of them has to have negative energy. But what about when the one with positive energy falls in and the one with negative energy escapes? How do we know it doesn't balance out? What are the chances of it actually evaporating because of this? I would think that over time you would have enough positive ones falling in to balance out the negative ones.

And what about the negative particles that escape? What happens to them? Maybe they cluster together and make negative mass....just the kind of "exotic matter" we need to hold open a wormhole....

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"The Hawking Radiation theory states that virtual particle-antiparticle pairs are sometimes created outside the event horizon of a black hole. Three things can happen to a pair of particles just outside the event horizon:

Both particles are pulled into the black hole.
Both particles escape from the black hole.
One particle escapes while the other is pulled into the black hole.

For the third possibility, the particle that has escaped becomes real and can therefore be observed from Earth. The particle that was pulled into the black hole remains virtual and must restore its conservation of energy by giving itself a negative mass-energy. The black hole absorbs this negative mass-energy and as a result, loses mass and appears to shrink. The rate of power emission is proportional to the inverse square of the black hole's mass.

Also,

Hawking Radiation: The positive particle of a virtual particle pair released from the event horizon of a black hole after the negative one is absorbed." (High-Energy Astrophysics Learning Center).

 

Yes, I understand now. But is there any reason it can't go the other way? The one with positive mass falls in, while the one with negative mass escapes? It could happen.

 

Alpha,

Presumably, only in the third scenario, at the instant the escaping virtual particle escapes into the "positive" matter-dominated Universe its trapped anti-particle twin (lost inside the event horizon) assumes the corresponding anti-matter/negative particle identity, and the black hole is diminished.

 

You are assuming that the one that escapes will always be positive. You still have not stated any reason why it can't be the negative one that escapes, and the positive one that gets sucked in.

 

I know.

And if it heads off into space and ends up beyond the event horizon of a black hole?

Of course.

Now you're just repeating what they said. Still no reason why not.

I want to ask the man himself. Now if I can just find an email address...

 

Alpha,

This only happens with tiny black holes...
It would be pretty dangerous if one would come near us...
Most of them existed in the beginning, right after the Big Bang.
They might even be inexistent nowdays...

All of it pure Scientific Mysticism (at least for now...)...

 

James R,

We have no proof about black holes, mini black holes and Big Bang. Those things were created only to explain what we don't know. Those are beliefs. A web of beliefs built one upon other (like Big Bang, Multiverse, etc...) is call Mysticism... or Religion... depends on your point of view...

 

Ridiculously powerful gravity wells have been observed out there in space. There exact nature, as far as I know, is still a mystery. If you take "black hole" to mean "some ridiculously powerful gravity well", then yes they have been observed to exist. The problems arise when people start whipping up crazy theories about using black holes to jump across the galaxy and such.