Unlocking the Universe: Lab Confirms Energy-Stealing Zel’dovich Effect of Black Hole Bombs

For the first time, scientists have created a “black hole bomb” in the lab, providing proof of the “Zel’dovich effect.” This theory, proposed over 50 years ago, has gained new attention due to recent breakthroughs in physics.

The Zel’dovich effect began with British physicist Roger Penrose in 1969. He suggested that energy could be extracted from black holes. This involves lowering an object into a specific area outside the event horizon called the ergosphere. As the object accelerates, it could potentially steal some energy from the black hole, known as the Penrose process. This process requires the object to gain negative energy to escape the black hole without just contributing more mass.

Jorge Pinochet, a physicist from the Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación, explains the mechanics of the process. He describes how launching a particle into the ergosphere can result in it splitting into two pieces. One piece could be absorbed by the black hole, while the other escapes with more energy than what was absorbed. This challenges our understanding of energy conservation but aligns with general relativity’s principles.

In plain terms, when a black hole absorbs negative energy, it loses some of its mass and rotational speed. This means that energy can be extracted from the black hole itself.

Years later, Yakov Zel’dovich proposed a more tangible way to test energy extraction from rotating systems. His idea ties into the Doppler effect, which describes how sounds shift in pitch as their source moves towards or away from an observer. This concept also applies to rotating systems—when energy from the rotation can be manipulated based on the frequency of incoming waves.

Sound waves bouncing off a spinning disc offered a way to test this. The team observed a frequency shift that indicated energy was gained from the disc. They next adapted this experiment to use electromagnetic waves, achieving similar results with a rotating aluminum cylinder. Dr. Marion Cromb from the University of Southampton highlighted that this experiment showed how fast rotation could create conditions for energy amplification.

The key is that when a cylinder spins quickly enough, incoming waves can shift into a “negative” frequency. This negative frequency indicates that, instead of absorbing energy, the system amplifies it. This principle is crucial for the recent black hole bomb experiment. In this setup, a reflective aluminum cylinder would interact with an electromagnetic field around it. The goal was to demonstrate how energy could be repeatedly reflected and amplified—similar to the way a black hole could potentially behave.

Though the researchers are not yet stealing energy from black holes themselves, the implications are exciting. They successfully created a model showing how energy could be massively amplified in a controlled environment. The system they built exhibited exponential growth in electromagnetic signals, mimicking the theoretical concept of the black hole bomb.

The findings suggest a fascinating path forward. While the current model is promising, the real goal is to observe the spontaneous generation of electromagnetic waves. Achieving this could take significant technological advancements, but it’s a challenge that researchers are now eager to tackle.

For more detailed insights into the scientific study, you can check the preprint on arXiv.

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