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According to my limited knowledge of Hawking radiation, there is an "explosion" when the black hole fully radiates away.

  1. What is this explosion? Is it in the form of EM radiation only, or something else as well? Is it even a traditional explosion?
  2. What does this explosion affect? If a black hole exploded in downtown Manhattan, for example, what would happen?
  3. How would you calculate this explosion's strength? For example, if the black hole started at $x$ kg, how would you calculate the strength of this explosion (preferably in a unit like 'kilograms of TNT' to contrast against other kinds of explosions.)
virchau13
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  • A black hole initially radiates mainly massless particles: photons and gravitons. At the end of its life, it also radiates massive particles: neutrinos, electrons, muons, various mesons, protons, neutrons, etc. – G. Smith Jul 06 '19 at 07:01
  • A 1 kg black hole would radiate about $10^{17}$ joules in about $10^{-16}$ seconds. This is about 20 megatons of TNT, or one hydrogen bomb. Much of NYC would be destroyed. – G. Smith Jul 06 '19 at 07:02
  • To last a reasonable amount of time -- say 1 day -- in order to transport it to NYC, the black hole would have to be about 10 million kilograms, making transportation difficult. It would also already be radiating a billion gigawatts. Over the next day it would proceed to release the equivalent of 10 million hydrogen bombs. The ensuing nuclear winter would kill off humanity. – G. Smith Jul 06 '19 at 07:04
  • (By the way, global warming is slowly and steadily adding the equivalent of 120 million Hiroshima-size bombs' worth of heat to the Earth every year. Four per second!) – G. Smith Jul 06 '19 at 07:06

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