The emission of particles by a black hole. In the intense gravitational field around a black hole, pairs of virtual particles may live long enough for one member of the pair to be pulled towards the black hole, while the other moves outwards until they are too far apart to destroy each other. This gives the appearance that the black hole is emitting radiation like a black body, with a temperature inversely proportional to its mass. When the Hawking radiation exceeds the amount of matter and energy entering the black hole, it will start to evaporate. For a black hole of the Sun’s mass, the temperature is only about 10⁻⁷ K, which is less than the temperature of the cosmic microwave background, so no evaporation would occur. However, mini black holes, with a mass of around 10¹² kg and radius 10⁻¹⁵ m, would have a temperature of around 10¹¹ K and would radiate strongly. The radiation was predicted to occur by S. W. Hawking.