Does a black hole violate the Law of Conservation of Matter/Energy?
Asked by: Adam R. Scott
Answer
Neither the existence nor the behavior of black holes
violates conservation laws. All matter and energy falling
into a black hole increase its mass, with the energy
converted into mass via Einstein's E=mc2.
The eventual 'evaporation' of black holes via the
emission of so called Hawking radiation reverses the
process, changing mass into energy, but the
total mass and energy of the system is still conserved.
Answered by: Paul Walorski, B.A. Physics, Part-time Physics Instructor
'The strength and weakness of physicists is that we believe in what we can measure. And if we can't measure it, then we say it probably doesn't exist. And that closes us off to an enormous amount of phenomena that we may not be able to measure because they only happened once. For example, the Big Bang. ... That's one reason why they scoffed at higher dimensions for so many years. Now we realize that there's no alternative... '