Re: Dark matter/energy question
They're not virtual at that point though - the intense gravitational field prevents the pair from annihilating each other and they become 'real'.
In any case, Hawking radiation is still theoretical and hasn't been experimentally verified. There's a lot that's not understood about the vacuum too - huge discrepancies between its energy as predicted by theory and that observed so take all of this with a bug chunk of caveat jam :)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
