Sonic Black Hole Created in Lab

discovermagazine.com...

Quote from source:

n June researchers at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, announced they had made an earthbound analogue of a black hole. Not to worry: Instead of a superdense object from which no light can escape, their more docile version merely prevents sound waves from getting out.

Constructing a sonic black hole was first proposed by Canadian physicist William Unruh nearly 30 years ago, but the Israeli team was the first to successfully create one. They cooled 100,000 rubidium atoms to a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero and used a laser to create a void in this tiny cloud. As the atoms, attracted to the breach, zipped across it at more than four times the speed of sound, they gave rise to a black hole effect. Under such conditions, no sound wave could travel against the flow of the racing fluid. “It’s like trying to swim upstream in a river whose current is faster than you,” says team member Jeff Steinhauer. The boundary between the subsonic and supersonic flows mimics a black hole’s event horizon, the point of no return.

I know it is not a "light eating" black hole but this sticks with the same theory, and proves that the science is right. Interesting to see and cool in it's own rights.

Any thoughts?

Pred...

Thanks for posting this as I had been thinking about it recently, wanting to revisit it -- fascinating experiment. This article has more details:

physicsworld.com...

Looks like their paralleling this model as well since these guys are mentioned at the end -- how the white hole and black hole work together to amplify effects:

en.scientificcommons.org...

Focusing and the Holographic Hypothesis (2007) * Steven Corley And, * Steven Corley, * Ted Jacobson Abstract The "screen mapping" introduced by Susskind to implement 't Hooft's holographic hypothesis is studied. For a single screen time, there are an infinite number of images of a black hole event horizon, almost all of which have smaller area on the screen than the horizon area. This is consistent with the focusing equation because of the existence of focal points. However, the boundary of the past (or future) of the screen obeys the area theorem, and so always gives an expanding map to the screen, as required by the holographic hypothesis. These considerations are illustrated with several axisymmetric static black hole spacetimes. 1 Introduction The generalized second law of thermodynamics[1] is the statement that the entropy outside event horizons plus the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy A=4 (in Planck units) of all event horizons cannot decrease. The law seems to be correct, at least in quasistationary processes[2]. If it is true, it must be that A=4 is the most entropy that could poss...

Here they are again

Focusing and the holographic hypothesis Corley, Steven; Jacobson, Ted Physical Review D (Particles, Fields, Gravitation, and Cosmology), Volume 53, Issue 12, 15 June 1996, pp.R6720-R6724 The ``screen mapping'' introduced by Susskind to implement 't Hooft's holographic hypothesis is studied. For a single screen time, there are an infinite number of images of a black-hole event horizon, almost all of which have a smaller area on the screen than the horizon area. This is consistent with the focusing equation because of the existence of focal points. However, the boundary of the past (or future) of the screen obeys the area theorem, and so always gives an expanding map to the screen, as required by the holographic hypothesis. These considerations are illustrated with several axisymmetric static black-hole spacetimes.

reply to post by predator0187






[edit on 23-1-2010 by drew hempel]

[edit on 23-1-2010 by drew hempel]

www.omatumr.com...

From the comments on that article. More fascinating research.

Thanks so much for posting these links, people. It IS fascinating, kind of frightening on the edge of science and technology.

This is probably not the last we'll be hearing of this type of work.

It makes me think of what happens if this could be done in space. Anyone have an idea?