Question: How are black holes made, and do they ever 'die'?

Nick Wright answered on 11 Mar 2014:

We think black holes are made when stars become too heavy and can’t support their own weight. Then they collapse down, becoming really really dense until they become a black hole. At the moment we don’t know if black holes ever die. Stephen Hawking has a theory that black holes might be able to slowly evaporate due to a very technical process caused by quantum physics. But even this process would take a very very long time. For example if you made a black hole out of our Sun it would take millions of times the age of our Universe for it to evaporate fully!