Researchers now believe they've found the equivalent of Hawking radiation in

laboratory experiments that mimic black holes in light, sound, or water.

It's hard to talk about black holes without mentioning Stephen Hawking.

Before he passed away in 2018, the world-renowned physicist had devoted his entire
life to exploring various theories on cosmic phenomena and creating his own
theories.

One of his most famous assertions was that our understanding of a black hole's
event horizon suggests that, actually, no black hole is an "entirely" black hole,
with him saying: "Black holes ain't as black as they are painted. "

black hole
Until recently, there had been no evidence to confirm Hawking's suspicions. Alain
Riazuelo of the French National Research Agency, via Wikipedia
In the context of black holes, the event horizon is a hypothetical interface in
spacetime separating a black hole from the rest of the universe and events beyond
this point cannot affect an outside observer.

It's the boundary at which gravitational acceleration becomes so great, that it

would make it impossible for any object to escape� even if a ray of light were to
cross, it would never leave again.

Every object in the universe carries information about its structure and shape that
can't just "dissolve", but this is theoretically what would happen if an object
were to go into a black hole. In general relativity, you simply can't escape a
black hole; once you're in, there's no going back.

However in 1974, Hawking put forward the theory that a black hole does in fact emit
something when you throw quantum mechanics into the equation. He hypothesized that
black holes had an "apparent" horizon, across which matter and light could move,
while leaving behind particles � now also known as Hawking radiation � that could
leave the black hole.

The researchers reconstructed imitation black holes

Just days before he passed away, Hawking had been working on the topic, trying to
confirm a theory.

He concluded that the event horizon was surrounded by a ring of photons that could
reflect the information from the black hole.

So far, however, this is just a hypothesis. Until recently, there had been no
evidence to confirm Hawking's suspicions.

Read more: According to Stephen Hawking, backward time travel isn't necessarily
physically impossible

However, researchers now believe they've found the equivalent of Hawking radiation
in laboratory experiments.

A study by researchers from the Weizmann Institute in Israel has demonstrated that
we've come a step closer to generating Hawking radiation in an optical black hole,
the results of which were published in Physical Review Letters.

Hawking radiation can only occur in conjunction with an event horizon

The premise behind Hawking radiation is that the very fabric of space is riddled
with quantum fluctuations. These fluctuations create pairs of particles and
antiparticles, which are short-lived because they almost immediately annihilate
each other.

But at the edge of the black hole, quantum pairs can be separated: While one
particle in the pair falls into the black hole, the other can escape, resulting in
radiation.

hawking radiation
The team found that negative light was drawing energy from the event horizon,
indicating stimulated Hawking radiation.BBC
In lab-generated black holes � also known as dumb holes � researchers can create a
kind of event horizon in a medium that can produce waves (such as light, water, or
sound) in an area where waves aren't able to escape. These experiments essentially
mimic black holes.

Read more: This black hole is spinning so fast that it could make space itself
rotate

Although these simulations don't produce the gravitational effects that a black
hole would, the same mathematics in these experiments can be applied to the
mathematics used to describe black holes under general relativity.

"Hawking radiation is a much more general phenomenon than originally thought. It

can happen whenever event horizons are made, be it in astrophysics or for light in
optical materials, water waves or ultracold atoms," said lead author of the study,
Ulf Leonhardt to Physics World.

The team chose to use an optical fibre system Leonhardt had developed previously
and found that negative light was drawing energy from the event horizon, indicating
stimulated Hawking radiation.

Read more: Astronomers have discovered black holes don't just 'eat' stars � they
'burp' them back up as 'stellar ghosts'

While previous dumb holes have simulated Hawking radiation, this experiment claims
to see actual Hawking radiation in the form of particles of light called photons.

Though these results are exciting, the aim is to observe spontaneous Hawking
radiation � the sort that would come from a black hole � as opposed to stimulated
radiation, though it's impossible to exactly recreate in the lab the conditions
around an event horizon.

"We plan to investigate this next," said Leonhardt, "but we are open to surprises
and will remain our own worst critics."

Read the original article on Business Insider Deutschland.

This post originally appeared on Business Insider Deutschland and has been
translated from German.
Copyright 2019. Follow Business Insider Deutschland on Twitter.
SEE ALSO: Scientists discovered a species of deep-sea fish that is so fragile it
would 'melt' if it left the ocean
NOW WATCH: Stephen Hawking warned us about contacting aliens, but this astronomer
says it's 'too late'
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