I am Michio Kaku, physicist, futurist and author of THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY-AMA!!

I am aware of the particle anti particle explanation, however it is my understanding that this is a heuristic simplification of the quantum field interactions underlying it.

It is.

Hawking radiation is a clever workaround for a phenomenon that cannot be explained without a theory of quantum gravity. Essentially, the singularity's gravity warps quantum fields that would normally generate virtual particles and these distorted quantum fields look as though they are forming real particles. The black hole's gravity essentially causes the quantum field to collapse into something that resembles real particles. The antimatter particle entering the black hole annihilates a positive mass particle in the singularity reducing its mass. To my understanding, there is no energy produced in this process.

Matter is absorbed by the black hole, the black hole emits blank hawking radiation until it evaporates, the information for the matter that originally fell in is lost. This violates the theory that information cannot be destroyed. There is no answer to this as far as I know. There are theories such as the black hole somehow imprinting information on the fleeing particle, but as of yet, this paradox is unresolved.

Please note I am not a physicist and this is the extent of my understanding.

/r/IAmA Thread Parent