Unlocking Time Travel Secrets in a Lab: Did Scientists Just Prove Hawkin...

 

 

"Using a chain of atoms to simulate the event horizon of a black hole, a group of physicists has observed the equivalent of what we call 'Hawking radiation.'

By arranging a chain of atoms in a single file to simulate the event horizon of a black hole, a team of physicists has observed the equivalent of what we refer to as Hawking radiation. It is believed to be emitted by black holes when one of the particles in a pair crosses the event horizon, escaping the gravitational clutches of the black hole, while its counterpart is swallowed. This process, also known as particle-antiparticle annihilation, indeed triggers the emission of Hawking radiation. But let's return to our laboratory experiment. The black hole started to shine. For physicists, this experiment could help resolve the eternal debate between two seemingly irreconcilable theories: general relativity, describing the behavior of gravity on the infinitely large scale, and quantum mechanics, describing the behavior of particles on the infinitely small scale. For a unified theory of quantum gravity that can be universally applied, these two theories must find a way to get along.

Event Horizon

This is where black holes come into play, the strangest and most mysterious objects in the Universe. These massive objects are so incredibly dense that nothing can escape them, not even light. Nothing can get out of the so-called 'event horizon,' the point of no return. Once an object crosses its boundary, we can only imagine what happens, as nothing returns with any kind of information. But in 1974, Stephen Hawking proposed that interruptions in quantum fluctuations caused by the event horizon translate into a type of radiation very similar to thermal radiation. If this Hawking radiation exists, it would be too weak to be detected by our technology. Still, we can probe its properties by creating a black hole in the laboratory.

The Experiment

In November 2022, a team of scientists created a one-dimensional chain of atoms that acted as a path for electrons. Physicists then caused a kind of event horizon to interfere with the wave nature of these electrons. This fake horizon produced a temperature increase that matched the theoretical expectations of an equivalent black hole system, the team said, but only when part of the chain extended beyond the event horizon.

Study Results

This could mean that the entanglement of particles straddling the event horizon is crucial in generating Hawking radiation. The simulated radiation was thermal only for a certain range of jump amplitudes and in simulations that began by mimicking a sort of 'flat' spacetime. This suggests that Hawking radiation can be thermal only in certain situations and when there is a change in the distortion of spacetime due to gravity."