Science

Scientists Create Artificial Black Hole to Study «Hawking Radiation»

Stephen Hawking predicted in 1974 that each black hole should emit a small amount of thermal radiation» due to small quantum fluctuations around the event horizon. However, «Hawking radiation was never discovered.

According to Новая наука, a team from the University of Amsterdam has found a way to reproduce this radiation in the laboratory through black holes.

To achieve their goal, Lotte Mertens, a PhD student in theoretical physics at the University of Amsterdam, and her colleagues studied a model based on a one-dimensional chain of atoms, where electrons can "jump" from one atomic node to another.

To create an artificial black hole, it is enough to take a chain of atoms (in green) and change the weight of electron hopping between each atomic site. By forcing part of the chain to fall within the simulated event horizon, the team recorded a temperature rise within the chain, consistent with the thermal radiation predicted by Hawking.