The late Professor Hawking claimed black holes are slowly evaporating in a groundbreaking theory 45 years ago in 1974. His theory said particles could rob black holes of their energy making them disappear at a minuscule rate as they release everything they had once swallowed in a trickle of dust. It was was dubbed ‘Hawking radiation’ but it has been virtually impossible to prove as the small black hole evaporation is too difficult to detect from thousands of light years away.
But now Jeff Steinhauer, professor of physics at the Technion University in Haifa, Israel, claims to have now proved the theory by recreating a ‘black hole’ in a laboratory.
The black hole in this instance was created from Bose-Einstein condensate.
Put simply, a Bose-Einstein is a state of matter consisting of gas and particles which are cooled to almost absolute zero (-273.15°C).
Whereas a standard black hole consumes light, the laboratory black hole does not allow sound to escape.
The laboratory results prove that Stephen Hawking’s theory was correct, as what was captured by the lab-black hole did eventually trickle away – although the test was carried out on a much smaller scale than what is found in the cosmos.
Prof Steinhauer said of the research published in the journal Nature: “We found very good agreement with the predictions of Hawking’s theory.”
Physicist Ulf Leonhardt of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, who was not involved with the study, added: “It’s a very important milestone.
“It’s new in the entire field. Nobody has done such an experiment before.”
However, the research is still not conclusive proof that Hawking Radiation does happen in real black holes, as the proportions are exceptionally different.
The team say they plan to continue with their research until the necessary technology is available to carry out the study on a much larger scale.
