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Question of the Day! by kickstart2006-11-19 12:23:33
  What did the Big Bang look like? (n/t) by ladouleurdouce2003-02-06 00:02:17
    Easy, by mirage2003-02-06 00:05:06
      which leads to the following: by CrazySteve2003-02-06 00:11:27
        From what I understand... by Khaar2003-02-06 01:06:05
          Black holes are held together by gravity. by Beorn2003-02-06 02:15:55
            Actualy... by GreyArea2003-02-06 02:29:30
              I don't think tunneling is involved. by Beorn 2003-02-06 14:24:51
Tunneling is when a particle passes a high-energy barrier to a low-energy place on the other side. That is, the particle has enough energy to get to the other side, but not enough to get over the barrier. It can then tunnel through the barrier. Let's say you want to go from one spot to another on flat ground. That's usually no problem, but if there's a wall in your way you might not be able to jump over it. If you were a subatomic particle you could then jump straight through the wall.

Escaping from a black hole would be more like climbing out of a well. Any place in the universe (except other black holes) requires that the particle have more energy than it can get. I can't see how tunneling would help, since there's not just a wall to get through.

You may be thinking of Hawking radiation, which can occur when a pair of virtual particles is formed in a quantum fluctuation near a black hole. Such particles will normally soon annihilate each other and disappear, but if one is sucked into the black hole and the other escapes, the one that escapes becomes a real particle. The black hole then has to "pay for" the energy required to create the particle. That way the black hole loses mass even though no matter passes out from it.

I don't think I can explain Hawking radiation any clearer, since I don't really understand it.

(Note that I'm not talking about the X-rays and gamma rays you mentioned. Those are - as you said - simply sent out from matter that hasn't yet disappeared into the black hole.)
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