Theoretically, extremal black holes would have zero Hawking temperature and emit no
Hawking radiation. In
supersymmetric theories, extremal black holes are often supersymmetric: they are invariant under several
supercharges. This is a consequence of the
BPS bound. Their
black hole entropy can be calculated in
string theory. One proposal, known as the "third law of
black hole thermodynamics", says that no physical process can form a black hole with vanishing surface gravity. This would disallow the formation of an extremal black hole; more specifically, no process involving a finite number of steps could produce a black hole without violating the
weak energy condition. A proof of this was published in 1986 by
Werner Israel. However, more recent work claims it contains an error and therefore extremal black holes are indeed possible. The third law of thermodynamics for black holes has always been
controversial. ==Near-extremal black holes==