Black holes form from the remnants of massive stars that have ended their life cycles. When such a star exhausts its nuclear fuel, it can no longer counteract the force of gravity with the pressure from nuclear fusion. This leads to a catastrophic collapse under its own gravity, resulting in a supernova explosion. If the remaining core is sufficiently massive (typically more than about three times the mass of the Sun), it continues to collapse into a singularity, a point of infinite density, surrounded by an event horizon beyond which nothing can escape.

Hawking radiation, theorized by Stephen Hawking in 1974, implies that black holes are not completely black but emit radiation due to quantum effects near the event horizon. This radiation arises from particle-antiparticle pairs that form near the event horizon, with one falling into the black hole and the other escaping. This process causes the black hole to lose mass and energy over time, eventually leading to its evaporation.

The theoretical implications of Hawking radiation are profound. It challenges the classical view that nothing can escape a black hole and suggests that black holes can eventually disappear, affecting our understanding of entropy and information loss in black holes. This touches on fundamental principles of quantum mechanics and general relativity, potentially leading to a unification of these theories.