I'll offer answers and responses to some of the questions and comments raised by contributors to this thread. Each begins with the pseudonym of the contributor of the question or comment followed by the question or comment, followed by ":--", and, starting on the next line, my answer or comment.

jwswitzer: It was mentioned that smaller black holes can vaporize. The analogy was that a glass of water, if left for a time, will vaporize and the water will disappear. However, the water really just changes form from a liquid to a gas. If I understand correctly the laws of physics require the vaporized black hole to not "disappear", but to also change into something else. Just what does it change in to?:--

All black holes evaporate, not just small ones. But only small ones evaporate fast enough for the evaporation rate to be appreciable. Black holes are believed to evaporate through a quantum mechanical procress that involving pairs of conjugate particles such as electrons and positrons. There is no good description in terms of classical physics. It involves "borrowing" energy from the vacuum, that is, from space itself, just outside the event horizon of a black hole subject to the requirement that the energy be returned to the vacuum within a time prescribed by the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics. The process has been pictured as spontaneous creation a pair of conjugate particles such as electrons and positrons from vacuum energy just outside the event horizon, one of the particles then falling through the event horizon while the other acquires enough energy through its fall into the black hole to repay the borrowed energy, The substance of the vaporized black hole is passed into the escaping particles. The actual process is much more complicated, involving quantum field theory.

PhilM: If you have these particle pairs that are randomly being generated where one goes into the black hole and the other isn't, how does it evaporate if it is still consuming particles?:--

See my answer to jwswitzer's question.

morlanky: When matter gets sucked into a black hole, it gets converted into energy. When Hawking radiation occurs, the energy gets transformed into matter again and gets spat out. Make sense?:--

Matter falling into a black hole is not converted into energy: It contributs to the mass of the black hole. The matter falling into the black hole is not converted into energy via black-hole evaporation. See my answer to jwswitzer's question.

The black hole is, in a sense, consuming negative calories. In return, it's spitting out positive, not negative, calories.

Himanshu Raj: Why do they (massive particles) have to go round the massive object before falling into it instead of going straight into it? How does the law of the conservation of angular momentum apply?:--

Strictly speaking, particles do NOT need to go around the massive object before falling into it. Infalling objects are extremly unlikely to be headed directly toward the massive object. No matter how small the anglke it's heading if off center, its inbound path will be put it on a heading that would take around the center of the massive body. If this path intercepts the massive object's surface, in the case of a black hole its accrettion disk or its event horizon, it will fall in. The law of conservation of angulart momentum is what insures that the above will happen.

Chas: I wrote them out as a MS Word file, but, understandably, the site won't let me attach a doc to a thread post. If anyone is interested in checking my numbers, e-mail me, and I'll be happy to send it to you:--

Perhaps you cannot attach a Word file, but you can copy it into your response, although you'll find that you'll have a limited character set: no bolds, italics, or underscores, superscripts, or subscripts, and limited if any special characters such as integral signs. My comments are copied from Word files.

Black holes, like everytthing else, almost certainly spit, although there is no requirement that they MUST spin. It would be extremely unusual to find one that was NOT spinning. General relativitistic frame dragging would deflect the path of an infalling object if it was headed directly toward the center of the black hole. An appropriate deviation of its path would still allow it to fall directly into the black hole.

Mrs B: What is quarksoup?:--

Quark soup is the name given to the contents of the Big Bang universe immediately after quarks, electrons, and a few antiparticles condensed out of the primordial pure electromagnetic radiation constituing the the Universe during the Planck era preceding 10 exp -43 seconds, the brief interval of the Big Bang history not accessible to model particle physics.

namcitsym: Is there a limit as to how much matter can be consumed by a black hole or will it devour any and all comers across the event horizon? If there is a limit, how is it quantified?

Theory knows of no limit on how large and massive a black hole can become.

Maddad: Time slows for a person approaching the event horizon, and stops when he gets there, but only from the point of view of the outside observer. From the point of view of the inbound traveler, his time is completely normal. Instead of stopping, he squirts right on through. If the black hole is massive enough, he might not even be aware that he had passed the event horizon.

On the other hand, his perceives the outside observer’s time as going faster. When the traveler reaches the event horizon, he would see the outside observer experience all the time through the end of infinity.

What I had hoped to see Dr. Pamela explain was the meaning of time from the point of view of the inbound traveler inside the event horizon in explaining the outside observer. This time must be greater than infinity, which I have difficulty understanding.:--

Your understanding of temporal phenomena associated with black holes is correct. Because the radial and temporal components of the Schwarzschild metric switch roles inside the event horizon, I wouldn't want to predict what the unfortunate traveller would experience before he, she, or it was torn apart by tidal forces, as would certainly happen no matter whatever the size of the black hole.

bones212: It seems to me that the gravity is equal all around it and objects should be drawn from all directions?:--

Correct except for the effect of general relatavistic frame dragging, that would deflect paths toward orbits around the rotational axis of the black hole.

Evileye: Black holes are like any other massive body. They spin. There is an equator, and poles.... sort of. Anything that gets close enough begins to follow the rest of the stuff falling in or rotating around it, much like the rings around Saturn. When they finally pass the event horizon they are no longer visible to us. So the only way to show it on a 2d piece of paper is like a toilet bowl swirl. The stuff doesn't get sucked in from every direction although it may have came that way.

Try to imagine merging into traffic. You were going north, and merge into an eastbound lane. You adjust, the eastbound traffic doesn't.:--

Your description is correct for movement outside the event horizon. Because of the exchanged roles of time and radial distance inside the event horizon, the picture is much more complicated and is not readily described.

publiusr: If you throw a rock into a pond what you get back are the ripples. It can't actually leave the black hole--but it will (for lack of a better word) displace its worth in Hawking radiation.:--

A black hole emits radiation steadily even nothing if falling into it.

omar: My question is, how the super massive black hole is formed? and what had feeded it during it's formation?:--

It forms by accretion of matter from its surroundings, the galaxy in whose center it is embedded. It's fed mostly by stars but also by gas, mostly hydrogen, and dust.

omar: What are the assumptions that underpin Hawking Radiation?:--

See my response to jwswitzer's question near the beginning of this thread.