The world’s first “black hole bomb” has now officially been created in the UK, and it has the potential to be as powerful as a supernova. In this case, though, the installation was created in a lab, as a safe demonstration model. The theory of a black hole bomb uses a series of spinning mirrors that reflect and amplify waves of energy that escape from a black hole – a process that, with real black holes, causes the energy to grow exponentially until the whole system explodes.
In the labs, though, instead of a black hole, the bomb was built to amplify magnetic fields through a complex structure of mirrors, and did, in fact, explode as intended.
“[It was] more of a ‘pop’ than an actual explosive ‘bang”, said Professor Danielle Faccio, co-author of the study from the University of Glasgow.
Though this test was successful and safe, she clarifies that “if one scaled this up in size, the ‘bang’ would become more serious.”
The black hole bomb works through superradiance, a phenomenon in which energy is transferred from spinning objects to radiation.
As to how it looks, Dr. Faccio says: “Seen from the outside, you will see an object or wave reflect away from the black hole and gain energy in the process.”
“If you now create a surrounding cavity or mirror of some kind so that the wave gets reflected back and forth between the mirror and black hole, you will have a continuous and runaway amplification effect.”
Then, the interchanged energy levels rise up so much that it causes the system to explode.
“The electrical components in our setup were literally exploding!”, Dr. Faccio added.
Even though the experiment was successful, a real bomb – using an actual black hole – is nothing but a distant reality for now, seeing as the nearest black hole from Earth is around 1,500 light-years away. Dr. Faccio also admits that the possibility is still “hard to see”.
Researchers also find that the new scientific method can be beneficial for already-existing energy collection processes in the future.
