Is there an absolute amount of shelf life to them

    • Wrufieotnak@feddit.org
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      2 days ago

      Nearly correct, but it’s not about negative mass, because that doesn’t exist as far as I know. Rather it is about matter and antimatter which have other opposite properties, the mass is the same for both. That’s why it doesn’t matter which particle goes back into the hole, because the creation of the particle pair used up some of the energy (and therefore mass) of the black hole and if both fall back, nothing changes. But if one escapes, a minuscule amount of the mass of the black hole left its event horizon and thereby decreased its mass.

      • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Would it be possible for the antimatter particle to be ejected instead of the ‘real’ matter particular?

        • qt0x40490FDB@lemmy.ml
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          17 hours ago

          The majority of Hawking radiation is composed of photons, and photons are their own anti-particle. But black holes should radiate just as many positrons as electrons.

          • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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            17 hours ago

            and photons are their own anti-particle.

            How are they their own anti-particle? Because they destructively interfere or something?

            • qt0x40490FDB@lemmy.ml
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              16 hours ago

              🤷‍♂️ because when we flip all their quantum numbers we still call them a photon? They have no charge, so if you flip their charge they still have no charge. They have no color, so if you flip their color they are still colorless, etc. The ability of a particle to interfere with itself is a general property of all particles, because all particles are probability waves, so this isn’t special to a photon.

        • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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          1 day ago

          Yes, and it doesn’t actually matter. The anti-particle will then at some point hit a regular particle of the same type and release energy instead, leaving the universe with more energy which came from the black hole and the destroyed particle.