Quantum nature of black holes

I reconsider Hawking's analysis of the effects of gravitational collapse on quantum fields, taking into account interactions between the fields. The ultra high energy vacuum fluctuations, which had been considered to be an awkward peripheral feature of the analysis, are shown to play a key role. By interactions, they can scatter particles to, or create pairs of particle at, ultrahigh energies. The energies rapidly become so great that quantum gravity must play a dominant role. Thus the vicinities of black holes are essentially quantum-gravitational regimes.