What happens when a black hole has nothing to feed on?

This process is called evaporation. So according to Stephen Hawking, black holes do evaporate. The radiated light from a black hole is called Hawking Radiation, which is a theoretical type of black body radiation.

Can black holes be empty?

Don’t let the name fool you: a black hole is anything but empty space. Rather, it is a great amount of matter packed into a very small area – think of a star ten times more massive than the Sun squeezed into a sphere approximately the diameter of New York City.

What could destroy a black hole?

There is nothing we could throw at a black hole that would do the least bit of damage to it. Even another black hole won’t destroy it– the two will simply merge into a larger black hole, releasing a bit of energy as gravitational waves in the process.

Will you get eaten by a black hole?

It’s one of the most pervasive ideas out there: if you wait long enough, no matter what or where you are, you’ll eventually get consumed by a black hole. There are likely close to a billion black holes orbiting amidst the stars that revolve around our Milky Way, dominated by the supermassive black hole at our galactic center.

What happens when matter falls into a black hole?

These motions imply a dark, massive body whose mass can be computed from the speeds of the stars. The matter that falls into a black hole adds to the mass of the black hole. Its gravity doesn’t disappear from the universe. This animation illustrates the activity surrounding a black hole.

What happens when a black hole swallows a star?

The black hole is surrounded by a ring of dust. When a star passes close enough to be swallowed by a black hole, the stellar material is stretched and compressed as it is pulled in, releasing an enormous amount of energy.

Can you miss colliding with a black hole?

Even if you managed to miss colliding with a black hole every single time, we know that gravitational waves cause all orbits to decay, eventually bringing you in contact with a black hole in the end. But this isn’t the only physics at play, and other processes turn out to be more important.