Jim, The instance of Hawking Radiation you saw on Nova goes back to quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle. For very brief periods of time, matter or energy can be created from "empty" space because no such thing as truly empty space exists. Hawking realized that if a particle/anti-particle pair came into existence near the event horizon of a black hole, one might fall into the hole before annihilating its anti-particle. The other particle could then escape the gravitational clutches of the black hole, appearing to an outside observer as radiation. Science truly is stranger than fiction. That particular Nova show was absolutely fantastic. But then, the Nova programs in general are great. There are some television programs that simply should not be missed. Jon Quoting utah-astronomy-request@mailman.xmission.com:
Send Utah-Astronomy mailing list submissions to utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to utah-astronomy-request@mailman.xmission.com
You can reach the person managing the list at utah-astronomy-owner@mailman.xmission.com
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Utah-Astronomy digest..."