
This is how black holes look like
There are many controversial theories in the science world, and one of them, regarding black holes, belongs to Stephen Hawking. It seems like the 2000s go back to the 1970s for answers and prove previous theories. Recent studies show that Hawking’s predictions were right: black holes evaporate, and they give off radiations.
Scientist Jeff Steinhauer from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology conducted an experiment in his laboratory and tends to agree with master Stephen Hawking. What he did was to create an artificial black hole, simulating the processes that occur in space.
The theory can be explained as follows: in space, there are pairs of photons (particles of light), which tend to separate from each other. When this pair is anywhere close to the black hole, one of the elements falls in, while the other drifts away into space, and this phenomenon leads to the so-called radiations with black holes. What Hawking tried to explain back then was that if black holes lose mass, they slowly disappear.
Jeff Steinhauer recreated the phenomenon of black holes, but instead of using light, he used sound waves. His observations were the same as Professor Hawking’s, including the paradoxes it implies, such as the information paradox. The researcher explains how he used sounds:
“The idea is that at the horizon, which is the boundary between the supersonic flow and the subsonic flow, that pairs of sound waves should be created spontaneously .“
There are other scientists who tend to be reluctant towards Steinhauer’s discovery, although they do not diminish the importance of it. One such scientist is Theodore Jacobson, who declared for The Christian Science Monitor:
“This entanglement measure is very delicate and subtle. He needs to exclude certain other kinds of excitations being present in his system, and it’s not clear to me that he verified that they’re not present.”
Expert Stephen Hsu from Michigan State University also told The Christian Science Monitor that this experiment should not be relied on as the only proof of the behavior of black holes. He explained that simulating is not as relevant as observing the real phenomenon out, in space.
Nevertheless, Jeff Steinhauer is confident about his experiment, and declares for the same publication:
“My work confirms the existence of Hawking radiation.”
Scientist Jeff Steinhauer published his study in Nature Physics (journal), on August 15.
Image courtesy of: Wikipedia