Scientist Observes ‘Hawking Radiation’ Effect In Artificial Black Hole For The First Time Ever

Back in 1974, popular physicist Stephen Hawking predicted that black holes aren't completely black and that they emit small amounts of radiation during evaporation. Now, an Israel-based scientist claims that he has observed the "Hawking radiation" effect in the lab for the first time ever.

Black holes are called so because their gravitational force is so intense that even light cannot escape through it. It was Hawking who came up with the conclusion that black holes evaporate over time through a quantum mechanical process referred to as "Hawking radiation." Now, Jeff Steinhauer, a physicist from the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, has successfully created an artificial black hole in the lab which he claims emits such "Hawking radiation" on its own. His model used sound instead of light to mimic the black hole properties, reported ScienceAlert.

In case of a black hole, the event horizon is described as a well-defined surface or edge, after which no light can escape as the escape velocity at this point is faster than the speed of light. Professor Steinhauer created the same conditions using a material called a Bose-Einstein condensate. During the experiment, the physicist observed the Hawking radiation in the form of extremely weak sound waves, with one wave on the outside and the other one on the inside. In fact, he had to repeat the experiment 4,600 times to study the slight waves, reported Nature.

Steinhauer noted in a paper published in the journal Nature Physics that he observed spontaneous Hawking radiation, which was stimulated by quantum vacuum fluctuations, coming out from an analogue black hole in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. He added that correlations were observed between the Hawking particles inside the black hole and the partner particles outside.

"We've verified Hawking's calculation and we've even seen that particles really are entangled," Steinhauer said. He added that that the study will give insight to physicists on real black holes.