🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <718283204.2@mailbox.bison.mb> Paul.Ciszek@mailbox.bison.mb.ca (Paul Ciszek) writes:
>Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.
>
>Could someone please clear up the following for me?
>
>Suppose we start with a cloud of hydrogen, with a total baryon number
>equal to the number of hydrogen atoms present.  As this cloud goes from
>protosun -> star -> supernovae -> neutron star, baryon number is conserved.
>Fine and dandy.  Now the neutron star collapses into a black hole.  I guess
>I ought to assume the black hole still "remembers" the baryon number somehow.
>Now, according to Hawking, the black hole evaporates into "radiation".
>Does it "evaporate" into light?  Or did he mean "particle radiation"?
>Is baryon number conserved in this last stage?

We have just been discussing this, so perhaps some kind soul will email
you some of what we wrote.  The short answer is "no-one knows."  The
not-so-short answer is that current theories seem to predict baryon
number nonconservation due to the process you describe, although many
people dislike this and are writing papers to wiggle out of it somehow.
Much worse than the baryon number nonconservation, at least in my
opinion, is the loss of unitarity.  

The black hole should emit particles of all kinds, not just light, but
nobody sees any reason why a black hole into which lots of baryons fell
should emit more baryons than antibaryons.