We May Finally Have a Way to Detect Hawking Radiation Leaking From Black Holes

The epic collision between two neutron stars in 2017 really is the science gift that keeps on giving. As they merged, gravitational waves rippled out across the Universe; now reverberations from that event could confirm a decades-old hypothesis about black holes.

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Tau.Neutrino said:

We May Finally Have a Way to Detect Hawking Radiation Leaking From Black Holes

The epic collision between two neutron stars in 2017 really is the science gift that keeps on giving. As they merged, gravitational waves rippled out across the Universe; now reverberations from that event could confirm a decades-old hypothesis about black holes.

more…

If the quantum fuzz responsible for Hawking radiation does exist around black holes, gravitational waves could bounce off of it, which would create smaller gravitational wave signals following the main gravitational collision event, similar to repeating echoes. This is what … they could have detected in the gravitational data. Their results, they say, match the simulated echoes predicted by models of fuzzy black holes emitting Hawking radiation.

But there are a few caveats. For one, an analysis last year of the gravitational wave data from GW 150914 – the first gravitational wave detection – found no evidence of Hawking radiation. In addition, another study last year made a concerted analysis of all the gravitational wave signals collected to date, searching for evidence of gravitational wave echoes and, by extension, Hawking radiation. It found “no statistically significant evidence” for echoes.

Anyone feel like ploughing through the conflicting literature on the recent observations?