Has Stephen Hawking's Black Hole Radiation Been Verified? New Lab Research Says "Yes"

Is a Nobel Prize on its way to Stephen Hawking? Hawking is world renowned for his work on gravity and black holes, including his 1974 postulation of the eponymous Hawking radiation, a theory that says a black hole should give off a stream of particles from its outer boundary. Hawking predicted that black holes emit thermal radiation due to quantum effects, which causes the black holes to lose mass and vanish. 

Despite numerous attempts, the faint emission has never been detected from a real black hole, so researchers have sought a number of laboratory proxies to demonstrate the general principles of the phenomenon. Now, Franco Belgiorno at the University of Milan and his colleagues claim to have observed something that looks very much like Hawking radiation from an event hole horizon they created in the lab.

The essential feature of Hawking radiation is not the black hole itself but the space-time curvature associated with the black hole's event horizon that acts as a boundary beyond which light cannot escape. So particle pairs excited from the vacuum that form close to the black hole horizon are split so that inner photon falls in and the outer photon escapes, gaining energy at the ultimate expense of the black hole.

Event horizons are not unique to black holes. Belgiorno  used a moving “refractive index perturbation” (RIP) in a dielectric medium (in which light can change the medium's refractive index) to mirror a black hole event horizon by firing ultrashort (1-picosecond) laser pulses at transparent glass, which excited an RIP that exhibited an event horizon. 

According to New Scientist, the researchers using a CCD camera detected a peculiar kind of photon emission at a 90-degree angle to the glass. As the researchers arranged the experiment in a way to strongly suppress or eliminate other types of radiation.

“Experimental evidence of photon emission that on one hand bears the characteristics of Hawking radiation and on the other is distinguishable and thus separate from other known photon emission mechanisms,” the physicists wrote in their study. “We therefore interpret the observed photon emission as an indication of Hawking radiation induced by the analogue event horizon.”

The team noted that there are actually two event horizons associated with the RIP. Besides the black hole horizon, there is also the black hole horizon's inverse called a white hole horizon. In the case of the RIP, the leading edge is the analogue of the black hole horizon and the trailing edge is the analogue of the white hole horizon.

With these observations, the physicists have shown that it's possible to investigate the physics of black hole evaporation in other, more accessible systems. If future experiments confirm that this is Hawking radiation, the results could have implications on everything from the fate of black holes to how the universe may end.

Casey Kazan

Sources 

Newscientist.com 

scientificamerican.com 

Comments

[Guest]

I don't know who is 'talking', but Stephen Hawking is little more than a puppet.

[Narendra Nath]

It seems to me that such critical cosmological experiments with doubts about location as well as measuremental errors need more than one repetition. Making God out of Prof. Stephen need not be made as everything he says in his theories must bear out experimentally. Finally, Physics accepts only data proofs.

[dirk alan]

stevie rocks. stevie rolls.

[Sinker]

"So particle pairs excited from the vacuum that form CLOSE to the black hole horizon are split so that inner photon falls in and the outer photon escapes, GAINING energy at the ultimate expense of the black hole."
I don't understand how particles outside an event horizon can gain energy at the expense of the black hole.
Can someone attempt to explain that one??
Regards
Sinker

[Zung Bee]

Wow, not surpriseing since Hawking is the smartest man on the planet!

www.be-anon.net.tc

[whatkidyou]

Sinker,

This may not be the most clear explanation, but I'll give it a shot. The pair of particles that are created at the edge of the black hole are an artefact from quantum theory, and are referred to as "virtual particles". It's basically a pair (one normal, the other is an anti-particle, with negative mass) of photons or neutrinos. Normally, they pop into existence and immediately annihilate each other, but at the event horizon of a black hole, the anti-particle is sucked in, while the normal particle is just outside of the event horizon, and is allowed to escape into space. The anti-particle, having a negative mass, effectively removes mass from the black hole, causing it to shrink in size. From afar, all that would be noticed is particles radiating from the black hole while the black hole loses mass. This is why it's called Hawking radiation, because the black hole appears to be radiating particles.

Hope this helps,
-whatkidyou

[Rob]

whatkidyou - excellent explanation, should have been in the article itself! Clarified things 100% - thanks!

[voldemort theconquestador]

that was more clear than the article Whatkidyou thanks

[Carroll]

So as the negative particles enter the Black Hole, instead of adding to the Mass of the Black Hole and because it is Negative Mass, the particle that is added to the Black Hole actually acts like a Vacuum in Space.

So does the particle that gets expelled (sent away from the Black Hole), turn into a new type of particle?

[ashirwad]

my favourite scintest

[hourieh]

Are you sure that the particle added to the black hole act like a vacuum ?I think ther should be another secret...

[BIREN SHAH]

the infection of plasmodium does not affect the mosquito?

[BIREN SHAH]

the emmikssion of black hole is not a particle nature but is a wave nature.

[nirmal mondal]

how would the big bang discover?
will u tell me about the pulsar planet & other planet which is discover recent?

[Ajay vakmik]

My question "how space - time are interrelated".............one possibilites hit's in my mind is that "like time itself being made up of numbers of particels which starts to disintegrates becos of some external energy source, i.e. Imagine a large mass forced to rotate/revolve at the expence of it's low mass in which every individual partical is time so time is allways goes only in one direction, but if this is assume to be right then how time machine is made......?" can any one solve this

[vishveshvar bhanarakar]

nice

[shivam dhurve]

wow! why the black hole is not distroid? why the human beings not reach on the black hole? In the blak hole somethings achievement distroid ex.planet,sun,etc. How it is possible. I am a big fan of mr.Hawaking please give me a ans of asked que. by me.

[ashish sarkar]

Black holes are a amazing wonder of universe i respect research made by steven hawking he has provide us more knowledge about the black hole .
my question is that can a black hole can become a portol for time travel or going far in the universe
is it a wormhole in the space made due to extreme power of gravity