doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2503.24034
Credibility: 878
#Black Holes
Researchers have developed the first lab experiment to mimic the “black hole bomb,” a theoretical idea first developed by physicists in the 1970s
Black holes are famous for their gravity, which is so strong that nothing escapes, swallowing up anything that comes near.
Nothing leaves a black hole, at least not after crossing the so-called event horizon, the invisible boundary around it.
But in the region close to the black hole, it may be possible to extract something.
In 1971, physicist Roger Penrose suggested that the rotational energy of a spinning black hole could boost the energy of nearby particles.
Physicist Yakov Zel’Dovich later proposed that an actual black hole was not needed to observe this effect.
He imagined that an object spinning inside a special chamber could transfer and amplify energy, on a much smaller scale.
Other scientists have discovered that if this system were placed inside a “mirror” that reflected the energy, it would create a cycle that would increase the energy more and more, until it “exploded” out of the system.
This concept was called a “black hole bomb”.
Now, a team led by Marion Cromb of the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom has managed to recreate this effect in the laboratory.
They published the details of the experiment on the scientific paper server arXiv.
To reassure you, the experiment is not dangerous! It uses a rotating aluminum cylinder, surrounded by coils that create magnetic fields that also rotate at controlled speeds.
First, let’s understand a little about the “ergosphere” of a black hole, which is the region just outside the event horizon.
The gravity of a black hole is so intense that it not only deforms space-time, but also drags it along with its rotation, as if it were a current.
This is called “frame dragging”
When particles pass through this moving space-time, they appear to gain speed if they travel in the same direction as the motion, like someone walking on a moving walkway at an airport.
When they leave this region, the particle has more energy.
Since we can’t recreate this gravitational effect in the lab, the team used magnetic fields to mimic the particles, and the coils around the cylinder acted as the “mirror” that reflected the energy, creating the amplification loop.
In the experiment, they observed that when the cylinder spun faster and in the same direction as the magnetic field, the magnetic field became stronger.
But when the cylinder spun slower, the magnetic field weakened.
This result is very interesting because it confirms ideas that have been proposed for decades.
“Our system meets the conditions predicted by Zel’Dovich for spontaneous energy generation and also the conditions described by other scientists for the ‘black hole bomb,'” the researchers wrote.
Since we can’t study black holes directly, experiments like this help us understand how they work.
It is still too early to know whether this discovery will have practical applications, but it is already a big step towards better understanding the most extreme objects in the universe.
Published in 05/03/2025 12h27
Text adapted by AI (Grok) and translated via Google API in the English version. Images from public image libraries or credits in the caption. Information about DOI, author and institution can be found in the body of the article.
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