Apparently, black holes are not bottomless pits: something always escapes. The astrophysicist's theory is confirmed Stephen Hawking.
In 1974, the astrophysicist made a radical prediction: something always escapes from a black hole. Not even light can resist the gravitational pull of these monstrous objects, which trap everything that enters them. All that remains is a shadow of what once was.
For years, scientists have been trying to find evidence for Hawking's theory. And now they seem to have found it.
A team of astronomers observed a black hole devouring a star and, for the first time, saw the "shadow" it creates. The results of their study are published in the journal Nature.
How did the researchers confirm Hawking's thesis?
The researchers used the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a network of eight radio telescopes spread around the world
In fact, black holes, artificially recreated in the laboratory, emit a form of radiation predicted 40 years ago by theorist Stephen Hawking. This was demonstrated by the experiment by Jeff Steinhauer, of the Haifa Institute of Technology in Israel, published in Nature physics.
Steinhauer built a Bose-Einstein condensate, a sort of artificial black hole, in which he could observe the emission of Hawking radiation.
The experiment opens interesting perspectives for the study of quantum phenomena near the event horizon of a black hole.
Because Hawking is right
In general relativity, the event horizon is an imaginary surface surrounding a black hole beyond which events cannot affect an external observer. In other words, it is defined as the border of the region from which escape is not possible.
Black holes are objects with such a great force of gravity that nothing can escape; according to Hawking, however, over time they would lose small amounts of energy in the form of radiation, so much so as to 'evaporate' in billions of years.
In short, black holes would emit one small amount of energy. Radiation of this type has never been seen before but Steinhauer's experiment may have demonstrated its existence.
