Gibbons–Hawking effect

The Gibbons-Hawking effect is a fancy way of saying that black holes can give off light and heat. Imagine a black hole like a really big bathtub drain. Water, or in this case, anything that gets too close to the black hole, gets sucked in and can't escape. But it turns out that some very tiny particles called "virtual particles" can pop into existence right on the edge of the black hole, and escape before the black hole can swallow them. When this happens, it's like the black hole is giving off a little bit of extra energy in the form of light and heat. Scientists Stephen Hawking and Gary Gibbons discovered this effect in the 1970s, and it's become a really important part of how we understand black holes and how they interact with the universe around them.