Black holes remain one of space's greater scientific mysteries, but thanks to the artificial replication of the phenomenon in a lab, we could be a step closer to understanding their strange radiation, first described by Stephen Hawking decades ago.
Real black hole: Quantum fluctuations in the vacuum of space produce virtual photons. Sometimes, one of a pair gets trapped behind the event horizon before the two destroy each other, forcing both to become real particles. The photon that escapes is emitted as Hawking radiation.Artificial black hole: Ultracold atoms in a tube undergo quantum fluctuations that produce pairs of virtual particles — in this case, packets of sound called phonons. If one phonon falls in the supersonic region, it is trapped, leading to a sonic form of Hawking radiation. [Nature]
Others say experiments in a lab don't explain much about real black holes. "This experiment, if all statements hold, is really amazing," Silke Weinfurtner, a theoretical and experimental physicist at the University of Nottingham, U.K., told Nature. "It doesn't prove that Hawking radiation exists around astrophysical black holes."
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Read more about the experiment, as well as a detailed explanation of Hawking's theory, in Nature.
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