Scientist Create Black Hole in Bose Einstein Condensate

As reported in a recent paper on the physics website arxiv.org, the scientists simulated the black hole by sending sonic waves through a form of matter called Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). BEC is a gas the exists only at the freezing temperatures near absolute zero, and the same equations that explain how sound moves through the condensate also describe how gravity effects light.

Using specially selected sounds waves, the scientists created a region within the BEC from which light could not escape. This is the first time anyone has succeeded in creating a so-called "sonic black hole", although researchers have been trying for almost 30 years. Theoretically, the same phenomenon that causes real black holes to emit Hawking Radiation will also cause the artificial black hole to emit them, too.

And while researchers have yet to observe any Hawking Radiation, they are clearly well on their way. Using sound to create a black hole? Chris Cornell would be proud.

www.popsci.com...

thought this was really interesting. Using soundwaves to create a black hole instead of mass is extremely strange to me but seems to support the idea that regions can keep light from escaping. . . . ill have to read more about it



added link

[edit on 14-6-2009 by constantwonder]

awesome news, but could you please cite your source?

reply to post by LiquidLight


a link to the article, I mean.

Another great finding as I've always believed that a blackhole is just another state of matter (blackhole is to solid what plasma is to gas). I always heard that the condensates were in some kind of weird liquid form though.

If sound waves increased some kind of pull against light, it'd have to be remarkably similar to how a detonation increases a magnets field strength.

Wonderful... so what happens when these intrepid "scientists" create a black hole that cannot be "turned off" and it eats our planet and everything on it... I guess none of us will be around to complain about it... isnt science grand?

Have you hugged your kids today?

reply to post by constantwonder


Woot woot!! I made the correct assumption that an artificial Black Hole might be created using BEC (Bose-Einstein Condensate)!!!

Here's my earlier post regarding that matter

www.abovetopsecret.com...

They created a black hole, and a very powerful artificial gravity, which also created an artificial Ergosphere, thus enabling FTL travel (pls see links below). They had to concoct a stuff made up of 'probabilistic particles' - the black stuff, which is the stuff of Quantum Mechanics, to manipulate the random fluctuations of space and generate gravitons - the hypothetical gravity particle. From the film, it might be some kind of Bose-Einstein Condensate, any superfluid, or something else.

So this could mean we are half way to time travel right?

Originally posted by antar
So this could mean we are half way to time travel right?

If this simulated black hole also created an Ergosphere, a working Event Horizon, and an insatiable apetite to gobble everything up including planets and stars, then yes. Not only time travel, but we'll also have the ability to travel Faster-Than-Light and reach the stars with tremendous efficiency.

en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

But since this is just a simulated black hole, it may not have all the properties of a real black hole.

[edit on 14-6-2009 by ahnggk]

arxiv.org...

We have created the analogue of a black hole in a Bose-Einstein condensate. In this sonic black hole, sound waves, rather than light waves, cannot escape the event horizon. The black hole is realized via a counterintuitive density inversion, in which an attractive potential repels the atoms. This allows for measured flow speeds which cross and exceed the speed of sound by an order of magnitude. The Landau critical velocity is therefore surpassed. The point where the flow speed equals the speed of sound is the event horizon. The effective gravity is determined from the profiles of the velocity and speed of sound.


Personally, I think the "analogue of a black hole" is a bit misleading considering black holes are supposedly a function of warped space caused by gravity, which this demonstration is clearly not.

The whole notion of "black holes" caused by warped space is a bunch of utter hogwash.


[edit on 14-6-2009 by mnemeth1]

Originally posted by mnemeth1
Personally, I think the "analogue of a black hole" is a bit misleading considering black holes are supposedly a function of warped space caused by gravity, which this demonstration is clearly not.

I really think the OP is misleading after you posted this link so thanks to you!!

Initially, I thought that sound is being used to cause actual light to be trapped!!

-100 pts to Popsci for a badly-written article!

This is an very exciting subject....On the edge science, just thinking about what this substance is make you day-dream....about...what the hell it is.

The particles do not know what state they are in and where they are. The quantum-mechanic theory in practise.

Although the practical applications are not entirely known and the ones that are not possible at this time, I can't wait to see what for "magic" stuff will do for us some day.

To illustrate some of its properties there is the genius idea from a danisch scientist. Because light can be used as a carrier of information she succeeded to do this: Watching light to travel with the speed of a bicycle.

In 1999, Danish physicist Lene Vestergaard Hau led a team from Harvard University which succeeded in slowing a beam of light to about 17 metres per second and, in 2001, was able to momentarily stop a beam.

She was able to achieve this by using a superfluid. Hau and her associates at Harvard University have since successfully made a group of condensate atoms recoil from a "light pulse" such that they recorded the light's phase and amplitude, which was recovered by a second, nearby, condensate, by what they term "slow-light-mediated atomic matter-wave amplification" using Bose–Einstein condensates:

Details of the experiment are discussed in an article in the journal Nature.

Rather exciting news.
Plus double kudos for the Soundgarden reference.

There are a number of reasons that this news is not as exciting as you may think.

Chief of these is the medium problem.

You see sound waves have to travel through a medium. It relies on kinetic energy transference through matter.

In the case of this experiment the medium for sound waves is a bose-einstein condensate... which for all intense and purposes is a super cloud of atoms all disconnected yet somehow in order with each other.

Light does not need a medium to travel... or if you will the medium light travels through is space-time itself.

Now, however amazing and unusual a state of matter such as the bose-einstein condensate, it does not accurately describe space-time. it cannot as it is held within space-time itself.

So...

Stating that you can accurately model a black hole through the methods of this experiment is a total fallacy, even though the effect may resemble the effects of a black hole, it certainly does not give us workable data to accurately model the true effects of a black hole on photons.

I hope this is of some help,

All the best,

Korg.


[edit on 19-3-2010 by Korg Trinity]