Hey, great call on getting the core of Hawking Radiation right—your basic understanding is totally on target. Let's unpack this a bit more to clarify the details you noticed:

• First, you’re correct that quantum fluctuations create pairs of virtual particles everywhere in empty space. Normally, these pairs annihilate each other almost instantly. But at a black hole’s event horizon, the extreme gravitational gradient (tidal force) yanks the pair apart before they can cancel out. One particle escapes at light speed c (what we observe as Hawking Radiation), while the other gets pulled into the black hole.
• Over time, this process siphons energy (and thus mass, via E=mc²) from the black hole—so your note about mass loss is spot-on.
• You also noticed that supermassive black holes radiate way slower than small ones, and that’s a key point tied to temperature: Hawking Radiation temperature is inversely proportional to black hole mass. Tiny black holes are blisteringly hot, so they shed mass rapidly. Supermassive black holes, though? Their temperature is actually colder than the cosmic microwave background, meaning they absorb more energy from space than they radiate—their mass loss is negligible on cosmic timescales.
• And yes, this only happens at the event horizon: farther out, the gravitational pull isn’t strong enough to split the virtual particle pairs permanently, so they just annihilate without leaving any trace.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者HyperDoge