Queensland scientists “positioned a particle close to a black gap”. What they noticed surprised them
Queensland scientists “positioned a particle close to a black gap”. What they noticed surprised them
Black holes can have completely different plenty on the identical time, Queensland scientists have confirmed.
Mathematical modeling by UQ scientists has proven that black holes can exist in a ‘superposition’ with a couple of mass at a time.Credit score:NightCafe Creator AI
College of Queensland analysis helps to unravel the interior workings of mysterious interstellar objects and brings collectively two fields of physics: quantum mechanics and gravity.
Gravity is normally described as working on massive scales, whereas quantum mechanics describes operations on microscopic scales, and unifying the 2 has challenged physicists for many years.
UQ PhD candidate Joshua Fu led a gaggle in search of to mix the 2 components by seeing if black holes exhibit quantum properties.
“We needed to mix a elementary property of quantum mechanics, which is superposition, the concept an object can have two properties on the identical time, with black holes, that are these large gravitational objects,” he stated.
Utilizing mathematical fashions, they checked out what occurred to the particle when it interacted with a simulated black gap.
They targeted on the mass of the black gap. if the black gap operated in a quantum mechanical framework, that mass can be expressed as a superposition, that means that the black gap would have completely different plenty on the identical time.
A well-known instance of superposition is the thought experiment of Schrödinger’s cat, which states {that a} cat in a field could be each alive and lifeless on the identical time, and it solely resolves to 1 or the opposite when it’s noticed.
Physicist Erwin Schrödinger meant the instance to display the absurdity of quantum idea, however subsequent experiments and modeling confirmed that particles exist concurrently in a number of states on the quantum degree.
