All black holes absorb mass attracted by gravity, and expel mass (Hawking Radiation). I've been led to believe, due to all popular representations of black holes, that astronomical (a.k.a. large) black holes grow. I've read that Micro-black holes shrink/evaporate.
My question is, at what mass and/or radius is a black hole a growing one, as opposed to a shrinking one?
Answer
If one assumes no other matter is supplied to the black hole (which is difficult to describe in a general manner as it depends on the details of the environment), the question if black holes evaporate depends on the difference between the emitted Hawking radiation and the absorbed cosmic microwave background radiation. According to the Stefan-Boltzmann law the Power emitted/absorbed by a black body is P=σAT4, where σ=π2K4B60ℏ3c2 is just a constant, A the surface of the body and T the temperature. So the emitted power of a black hole is P=σA(T4H−T4CMB), where TH=ℏc38πGMkB is the Hawking temperature and TCMB≈2.725K is the current temperature of the CMB. One can now simply check up to which mass M the black hole's Hawking temperature is lower than the CMB temperature. One finds, with the formulas above, that TH>TCMB⇔M<ℏc38πGkBTCMB=4.5⋅1022kg=0.075M⊕, where M⊕ is the mass of the earth. This mass correponds to a black hole radius of 6.5⋅10−5m using rS=2GMc2. Stellar black holes however, which are formed in gravitational collapse, have masses larger than 5M⊙≈2⋅106M⊕, where M⊙ is the solar mass which corresponds to balck hole radii of above 70km.
Notice however, that if the universe keeps on expanding then the CMB temperature will keep on dropping and even heavy black holes will evaporate eventually.
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