Al Johnston looks at the more obscure frontiers of hard science.
Hawking Radiation, as I’m sure you are all aware, is necessary to explain why we aren’t all totally overwhelmed by primordial black holes, distorting local space-time, eating everything in sight, nabbing the best seats at the cinema and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Before Hawking Radiation, a black hole could never go away once it had formed, and small ones formed in the Big Bang would continue to beetle around causing havoc for the rest of the history of the Universe, forever growing and consuming more and more matter. This is not good.
However, Hawking Radiation provides a way for small black holes to dissipate. Essentially, a virtual particle/anti-particle pair arises through quantum uncertainty in the vicinity of the event horizon; one goes into the hole, the other radiates outward. In effect, the hole radiates energy and therefore mass (pages 104-106, if you’re interested).
"All well and good," I hear you say, "but it’s all rather abstruse and where does the curry come into it?"
Most people would think that all this is just some kind of obscure mathematical posturing that physicists indulge in between bouts of train spotting; it has no chance of being observed in the real world and is therefore not worth bothering about.
O ye of little faith.
Fizzicists don’t do much train spotting as a whole, and so have an ideal opportunity to observe Hawking Radiation as it happens, in the privacy of your own home, and without mucking about with all these hyper-expensive atom-smashers. In fact, you have probably seen it already; it all depends on how you define "virtual particle/anti-particle pair" and "in the vicinity of the event horizon".
It tends to be taken for granted that the particle and anti-particle should be subatomic and that the vicinity extends about 10-37 metres away from the event horizon. In fact, the particles can be as complex as the common, but little-publicized, King Prawn Biryanion (rest mass 10.5 GeV), and the vicinity extends as far as any household freezer.
It is reasonably well documented that after a given time interval, an unattended freezer will be found to contain a curry of unknown provenance; the ill-informed often mistakenly ascribe this to forgetfulness or human intervention, little realizing they are watching the basic operation of the Universe unfolding before their eyes. This can be amply demonstrated by the fact that many of these once-virtual curries have negative mass. (A simple experiment will prove this. Weigh yourself, eat one and then weigh yourself again as soon as possible; you will frequently weigh less the second time around.)
So much for the particles, Hawking Radiation also postulates the existence of corresponding anti-particles. As RED DWARF fans are well aware, lager is the only known substance which can kill a curry. The reason for this is simple: lager is anti-curry, the one annihilating the other in classic Einsteinian fashion and liberating energy according to the well-known E=mc2. Thus, the diner derives energy quite independently of the supposed calorific content of the ingested particles, the violence of the mutual annihilation providing ample explanation of the digestive rumblings which frequently accompany such a repast.
A negative mass curry will, of course, absorb energy, draining the diner and causing a renewed feeling of hunger, an effect Chinese takeaway fizzicists have been exploiting for years. Mutual separation of the virtual pair is a prime requirement of Hawking Radiation, which is why unexplained cans of lager choose to pop into existence at the back of the fridge rather than into the freezer.
So there you have it, the obscure machinations of the Universe manifest in your own kitchen. Of course, a black hole was originally required to set up what has now become a self-perpetuating phenomenon. I think you can guess where it was...´
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