‘Extremely strange physics’: researchers test a 50-year-old theory that throwing an object into a black hole and then retrieving it could generate enough energy ‘to feed planets’
- The black hole energy theory was proposed by physicist Roger Penrose in 1969
- He said it would take an advanced alien civilization to test the theory.
- A 1971 idea that twisting light waves on a spinning disk could test the theory
- The technology doesn’t exist to spin the disk at least a billion times per second
- This new study included firing sound waves at a slower rotating disk and measuring the response; discovered that this resulted in the expected increase
Scientists have demonstrated a theory that energy can be created by throwing objects into a black hole more than 50 years after it was first proposed.
A team of researchers from the Faculty of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Glasgow set out to validate the 1969 work of British physicist Roger Penrose.
They used sound waves in an attempt to back up the ‘extremely strange physics’ caused when an object is dropped into a black hole and then splits in two.
He theorized that the energy generated by the recoil action of retrieving half of the object could be stored and used to power entire worlds.
Scientists have been searching for ways to test the theory for decades, after Penrose claimed that the engineering challenges to test it could only be carried out “by an advanced, possibly alien, civilization.”
A team of researchers from the Faculty of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Glasgow set out to validate the 1969 work of British physicist Roger Penrose
In 1971, physicist Yakov Zeldovich suggested that the theory could be tested with twisted light waves projected onto a rotating surface.
To prove that, the rotating surface would need to rotate at least a billion times per second, a feat that is not yet possible due to engineering limitations.
Now, the Glasgow researchers have finally found a way to experimentally demonstrate the effect using sound waves.
This works since sound waves require a much slower rotating surface than light.
Using a ring of speakers, the researchers sent a rotating sound wave to a rotating foam disk with two microphones attached to the back.
They found that as sound waves passed through the disc, pitch was amplified by up to 30 percent, known as the rotational Doppler effect.
Marion Cromb, lead author of the article, said the linear version of the Doppler effect is familiar to most people.
“The phenomenon occurs when the tone of an ambulance siren appears to increase as it gets closer to the listener, but falls when it moves away,” Cromb said.
“It seems to increase because the sound waves reach the listener more frequently as the ambulance approaches, and less frequently as it passes.”
The team says the rotational Doppler effect is similar, but the effect is limited to a circular space, rather than stretching over a line.
In their experiment, they discovered that twisted sound waves change their pitch when measured from the point of view of the rotating surface.
“If the surface rotates fast enough, the frequency of sound can do something very strange: It can go from a positive frequency to a negative frequency and, in doing so, steal some energy from the surface rotation,” Cromb said.
They used sound waves in an attempt to back up the ‘extremely strange physics’ caused when an object is dropped into a black hole and then splits in two.
During the experiment, the researchers discovered that when the tone of the sound wave hits the spinning disk, it falls until it becomes too low to hear.
Then, as it passed, it was amplified by up to 30 percent more than the original tone, mimicking the expected effects of dropping an object into a black hole
Professor Daniele Faccio, co-author of the article, said they were delighted to be able to experimentally verify extremely strange physics.
“ It is strange to think that we have been able to confirm a half-century theory with cosmic origins here in our laboratory in western Scotland, but we believe that it will open up many new avenues of scientific exploration.
‘We believe it will open up many new avenues for scientific exploration. We are eager to see how we can investigate the effect on different sources, such as electromagnetic waves in the near future. ”
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