Black Hole Q:

"BH" == Bryan Heit writes:

BH I was reading through "A Brief History of Time" - a little late,
BH but better late then never. One thing that caught my attention
BH was the idea of "hot" blackholes, as in all black holes should
BH emit gamma radiation (hawking radiation) and thus be detectable by
BH looking for gamma radiation sources. I did a quick google search
BH and didn't find much on detecting hawking radiation. Has this
BH ever been observed, or is it still a theory?

As others have explained already, Hawking radiation is still a
hypothesis and has not yet been detected. So-called primordial black
holes, those that were formed soon after the Big Bang, are small
enough that, *if they existed today*, they would be evaporating.
There's been a recent revival of interest in such objects, e.g.,
URL:http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0304528 (although none has been
detected).

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