What would happen if you fed antimatter into a black hole?

Find out what would happen if antimatter were to come across one of the universe’s most exotic objects

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Antimatter is material made up of the antiparticles of the particles in ordinary matter. Image credit: Tobias Roetsch

Asked by David Hunt

If antimatter fell into a black hole it would behave the same as matter. Experiments down here on Earth have shown that antimatter still obeys the laws of gravity and as such, would still be pulled into a black hole and be constrained within the event horizon.

As we can’t take measurements from inside a black hole it is difficult to know exactly what occurs inside these exotic objects. If there is matter within the black hole, the antimatter would annihilate with it releasing energy, however, this energy would still be unable to escape the event horizon. Stephen Hawking’s Hawking radiation actually relies on antimatter falling into a black hole to allow the radiation to escape, so it is assumed this occurs fairly often.

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