London, Jun 17 : Scientists have created what they claim is an artificial black hole that traps sound in a bid to find out whether eminent physicist Stephen Hawking's radiation actually exists in theory.
According to the theory proposed by Hawking 30 years ago, radiation causes black holes to evaporate over time.
Astrophysical black holes are created when matter gets so dense that it collapses to a point called a singularity. In fact, physicists have been developing 'black holes' for sound. They do this by coaxing material to move faster than the speed of sound in that medium.
Now, a team, led by Jeff Steinhauer of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology is the first to document an experiment directly aimed at producing Hawking radiation in Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC), the 'New Scientist' reported.
The scientists cooled 100,000 or so charged rubidium atoms to a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero and trapped them with a magnetic field.
Using a laser, they then created a well of electric potential that attracted the atoms and caused them to zip across the well faster than the speed of sound in the material. Ze
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