Scientists Created a Black Hole in Lab to Understand How It Works — Then It Started Glowing

The black hole is one of the biggest cosmic mysteries that scientists worldwide still struggle to fully understand. It is described as a region of spacetime with dense and ferocious gravitational forces just beneath the surface, called the event horizon, that does not allow even light to escape, thus, imparting the dark hues. The event horizon became the basis of a recent study conducted by a team of scientists who created a black hole analog in the lab to understand the radiation theoretically emitted by the real phenomenon, per the study published in the journal Physical Review Journals. 

Lotte Mertens of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and his team of physicists put together an experiment never done before. They created a simulation of the event horizon of a black hole using a chain of single-file atoms that eventually started glowing, noted as Hawking radiation. It is when particles are formed due to disturbances in the quantum fluctuations caused by the black hole’s break in spacetime, per Science Alert. If a black hole has a disproportionate relationship between the mass gained and lost, it will eventually vanish, as per the Hawking radiation. At present, the explanation of the black hole and the Universe at large is riddled with two physical frameworks– the general theory of relativity or Einstein’s theory of relativity, and quantum mechanics. 

The first theory describes space gravity as a continuous field known as spacetime whereas quantum mechanics explains it using the mathematics of probability considering the behavior of discrete particles. While Hawking radiation was observed in the black hole analog, the actual radiation in the cosmic phenomenon is too faint to detect. Hence, the significance of a lab-synthesized black hole where the artificial event horizon interacted with the wave-like nature of electrons causing a temperature rise, as anticipated. However, what followed none of the scientists had fathomed. As the chain of atoms surpassed the event horizon, they witnessed a bright glow of Hawking radiation. However, the emitted radiation was only thermal for specific amplitudes of the electron waves. 

In addition, the black hole simulation occurred only under a condition where spacetime was considered “flat.” The researchers stated in the paper, “This, can open a venue for exploring fundamental quantum-mechanical aspects alongside gravity and curved spacetimes in various condensed matter settings.” According to NASA, black holes are huge concentrations of dense matter packed into very tiny spaces and are not really holes as the name suggests. More so, the event horizon described as the surface of the black hole barely resembles the surface of the Earth or even the Sun. Ongoing studies are trying to discover more about the appearance of matter inside the phenomenon.

Meanwhile, the closest identified black hole is called Gaia BH1, which exists about 1,500 light years away while the biggest most massive black hole is the TON 618, weighing 66 billion times the Sun’s mass. Earlier it was believed that black holes act like vacuum cleaners and suck in every matter that comes along their way. However, it was eventually found that their gravity is similar to other objects of the same mass, which happens to be incomprehensible. These mysterious cosmic phenomena are not wormholes, as often thought to be, that may provide alternate pathways to different universes.