Ask Space
ASTROPHYSICS
Can a black hole disappear?
Surprisingly, yes, a black hole could disappear. It would take a very, very long time though. Black holes are regions of space which have so much mass in such a small volume that the escape velocity – the speed you need to go to escape the gravitational pull of the body – becomes greater than the speed of light. These cosmic behemoths can grow in mass as material falls onto them. If a black hole finds itself in a quiet region of the universe, however, the strange world of quantum mechanics and the extreme gravity of the black hole cause a phenomenon named Hawking Radiation’ – one of the discoveries of the late Stephen Hawking.