Laser Light Re-creates 'Black Holes' in the Lab 245
yodasz writes "The New Scientist reports that a team of researchers from the UK were able to recreate a black hole's event horizon in the lab by firing a laser pulse down an optical fibre. The team's observations confirm predictions made by cosmologists and now they are trying to prove Hawking's hypothesis of escaping particles, dubbed Hawking radiation. 'The first pulse distorts the optical properties of the fibre simply by traveling through it. This distortion forces the speedy probe wave to slow down dramatically when it catches up with the slower pulse and tries to move through it. In fact, the probe wave becomes trapped and can never overtake the pulse's leading edge, which effectively becomes a black hole event horizon, beyond which light cannot escape.'"
Am I slow? (Score:2, Insightful)
A black hole event horizon? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Am I slow? (Score:3, Insightful)
Artificial event horizon != Artificial black hole.
Somehow I highly doubt that even if they can get the fiberoptics to 1000 degrees centigrade and perform this experiment that they'll get any hawking radiation out of it.
Re:Sounds safe (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, your way of describing it doesn't generate NEAR as many hits on the ads...um, article.
Interesting test conditions... (Score:2, Insightful)
FTA:
This makes me wonder how they're differentiating between light produced by their optics cable being on fire, and falloff from the laser. Or do optic cables not ignite at 1000 degrees centigrade? Regardless, it seems that there would be conflicting noise in a (presumably) non-vaccuum, lighted environment.
Re:Please enough already... (Score:4, Insightful)
After a cursory glance thru TFA, it sounds like light waves are just interfering in a way that prevents the lagging, faster wave from propagating past the slower, leading wave. Can any physics people out there explain how this could possibly be interpreted as "we created a black hole in a lab environment"?
Re:Black Hole (Score:3, Insightful)
Sort of, similar to the way the scientific establishment has suppressed radical ideas until the later, sometimes much later became mainstream.
Scientists are human and as such often do care for dogma more than data. This always been and will always be.
Presently, mainstream cosmological theories largely ignore the electric force as a major, often dominant factor in the operation of the large scale universe. There are two forces at work in the large scale universe. One is gravity and the other is the electric interaction. The latter is mostly ignored in today's cosmological theories. This is why modern space probes deliver so many puzzling "surprises" that have no good explanation if the electric interaction is ignored.
Agree: enough already...of you (Score:2, Insightful)