How Does a Black Hole Lose Mass?

Imagine a black hole as a giant vacuum cleaner in space. You might think it only gets bigger by sucking up stars and gas, but it actually shrinks very slowly over time.

Space is never truly empty. Tiny particles pop in and out of existence like bubbles in boiling water. When this happens right near the edge of a black hole, one particle might fall inside while the other escapes into space.

The escaped particle carries away a tiny bit of energy. To balance the books, the black hole loses an equivalent amount of mass. It is like paying for a snack by losing weight.

For big black holes, this happens so slowly that it seems impossible to notice. But over trillions of years, they will leak enough energy to completely evaporate into nothingness. This process is called Hawking radiation. It proves that even the strongest traps in the universe are not permanent.