Lab fireball 'may be black hole'
A fireball created in a US particle accelerator has the characteristics of a black hole, a physicist has said.
It was generated at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in New York, US, which smashes beams of gold nuclei together at near light speeds.
Horatiu Nastase says his calculations show that the core of the fireball has a striking similarity to a black hole.
His work has been published on the pre-print website arxiv.org and is reported in New Scientist magazine.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4357613.stm
RHIC stands for Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. It is a particle accelerator located at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, used to study nuclear matter and the fundamental interactions of subatomic particles.
The lab fireball at RHIC was created by colliding gold ions at nearly the speed of light. This collision created a hot and dense state of matter known as a quark-gluon plasma, similar to the conditions after the Big Bang.
Scientists have observed the formation of a circular and dense core in the lab fireball, similar to a black hole's event horizon. This core is surrounded by a low-density halo, similar to what is observed in astrophysical black holes.
No, the lab fireball at RHIC does not have enough mass to form a black hole. The core observed is also not a singularity, which is a key characteristic of a black hole. The similarities in structure are purely coincidental and allow scientists to study black hole properties in a controlled laboratory setting.
The lab fireball at RHIC provides a way for scientists to study and test theories about black holes in a controlled environment. This can help us better understand the behavior and properties of black holes and their role in the universe.