Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A Should (lone) black holes emit gravitational waves?

There are no gravitons in General Relativity, and black holes don't evaporate in General Relativity (i.e. there is no Hawking radiation). The consequence of Hawking radiation, or something similar,...

posted 2mo ago by Derek Elkins‭

Answer
#1: Initial revision by user avatar Derek Elkins‭ · 2024-09-10T02:53:14Z (2 months ago)
There are no gravitons in General Relativity, and black holes don't evaporate in General Relativity (i.e. there is no Hawking radiation). The consequence of Hawking radiation, or something similar, being empirically verified, would be an empirical refutation of General Relativity, precisely because it *doesn't* predict this. Specifically, General Relativity doesn't predict that black holes will "evaporate" at all.

There's a semi-implicit subquestion of whether Hawking radiation predicts that some of the energy radiated away would appear as gravitational waves. I don't know, but it seems plausible. Either way, General Relativity doesn't predict it.

If Hawking radiation occurs, models of a black hole in General Relativity would be like models of an iron beam in solid mechanics. Iron beams corrode but the solid mechanics model isn't going to predict that nor the change in the relevant mechanical properties, because it doesn't model chemistry.

Could we adapt General Relativity into a different, but still non-quantum, theory that did predict this? Probably, in the same way we could have the iron beam's mechanical properties change over time "just because" from the model's perspective. My impression is any such theory would be presented as and, even more, received as an approximation to an underlying quantum gravity theory and not as a new foundational theory of gravity.