Before immersing ourselves in the concept of a “black hole pump”, an idea that seems terrifying, you have to understand some details of the physics of a black hole. First, we need to speak briefly about The erosphere of a black hole: the space outside the horizon of events. We know that gravity deforms space-time. The gravitational field of a black hole is so intense that not only deforms the space-time, but drags it with its rotation. This is called frame drag.
When the particles travel through gravitationally affected space-time, they simply move to their own speed. But if that space-time moves and the particles travel in the same direction, They seem to travel faster for anyone outside it, Something like walking through a conveyor belt at an airport.
This makes When a particle emerges from the space-time in motion, it has more time. This is precisely the basis for a team of scientists to have developed researchers have created the first laboratory analogue of the “black hole bomb”, a theoretical concept developed by physicists in the 1970s.
If black holes are known for something, it is because of its insatiable and unavoidable gravity. Things enter a black hole. In fact, much is not obtained. From beyond the horizon of events, this is true, as far as we know. But from the space surrounding a black hole, something could be obtained. As Roger Penrose proposed in 1971the powerful rotational energy of a black hole in rotation could be used to amplify the energy of nearby particles.
The physicist Yakov Zel’dovich discovered that A black hole was not needed to observe this phenomenon in action. A body rotating in a resonance chamber could produce the same transfer and amplification of energy, although on a much lower scale. Subsequent studies They discovered that, if the entire device is enclosed in a mirror, a positive feedback loop is generated that amplifies the energy until it explodes outside the system.
This concept was called the black hole bomb, and a team of physicists led by Marion Crom, from the University of Southampton (United Kingdom), says it has come true. The study has been published in Arxiv. For greater peace of mind, This black hole pump does not represent any danger. It consists of a rotating aluminum cylinder, placed inside layers of coils that generate magnetic fields that rotate around them at controllable speeds.
While the Cromb team does not reproduce the gravitational effect of a black hole, Yes manages to simulate it using magnetic fields as substitutes for the particles, with the coils around the system acting as a reflector to produce the feedback loop.
When carrying out the experiment, they discovered that, When the cylinder rotates faster and in the same direction as the magnetic field, it is amplified And when the cylinder revolves more than the magnetic field, it is attenuated.
“The system satisfies the experimental conditions speculated by Zel’Dovich for the observation of the spontaneous generation, as well as the conditions for the black hole pumps – points out the study -. The experiments presented here are a direct implementation of the concept of black hole pump”
Taking into account that we cannot probe black holes directly, analogues like this are an excellent way of understanding their properties. For now, however, the experiment could represent A significant step towards a better understanding of the physics of gravitationally more extreme objects in the universe.