A new warp speed experiment could offer an indirect test of Stephen Hawking's most famous prediction about black holes.
The proposal suggests that by nudging an atom to become invisible, scientists could catch a glimpse of the ethereal quantum glow that surrounds objects at close to the speed of light.
The Unruh effect causes the space around objects to be filled with virtual particles, bathing them in a warm glow. The effect is related to the Hawking effect, in which virtual particles known as Hawking radiation spontaneously pop up at the edges of black holes.
The X particle was detected at the dawn of time.
It is incredibly difficult to spot either effect. The acceleration needed for the Unruh effect would probably require a warp drive. A new proposal published in the journal Physical Review Letters could change that. The Unruh effect can be dramatically boosted through a technique that can turn matter invisible.
The co-author of the new experiment, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, said in a statement that there is a chance in our lifetimes where we might actually see this effect.
The Unruh effect was first proposed by scientists in the 1970s. There is no such thing as an empty vacuum according to this theory. If given enough energy, any pocket of space can be filled with endless quantum-scale vibrations that can spontaneously erupt into particle-antiparticle pairs. Any particle, be it matter or light, is just a small part of the quantum field.
Stephen Hawking predicted in 1974 that black holes would create virtual particles because of the extreme gravity felt at their edges.
Einstein's theory of general relativity states that gravity distorts space-time so that quantum fields get more warped the closer they get to a black hole. Because of the uncertainty of quantum mechanics, this warps the quantum field, creating pockets of different moving time and spikes of energy across the field. Virtual particles emerge from what appears to be nothing at the fringes of black holes because of energy mismatches.
Barbara oda, a PhD student in physics at the University of Waterloo in Canada, said in a statement that black holes are not completely black.
The Unruh effect creates virtual particles through the weird interplay of quantum mechanics and Einstein's theories. Black holes and the theory of general relativity can cause distortions, but this time they are caused by near light-speeds and special relativity.
According to quantum theory, a stationary atom can only increase its energy by waiting for a real photon. The fluctuations in the quantum field can make an atom look like a photon. It will move through a crowd of warm light particles, all of which will heat it up. The heat would be a sign of the Unruh effect.
An atom would need to accelerate to the speed of light in less than a millionth of a second.
To see this effect in a short amount of time, you would have to have a lot of speed.
The researchers came up with an ingenious alternative to make the effect realizable. The Unruh effect is a result of quantum fluctuations being made denser by photons, which means that an atom made to move through a vacuum while being hit by light from a high-intensity laser could, in theory, produce the Unruh effect. The problem is that the atom could interact with the laser light to raise its energy level, which would cause the Unruh effect.
The researchers found another way to do it. If the atom is forced to follow a specific path through a field of photons, it will not be possible to see the photons of a certain Frequency. The team would be able to test the Unruh effect by daisy-chaining all these workarounds.
It will be difficult to make that plan a reality. The scientists plan to build a lab-size particle accelerator that will accelerate an electron to light speeds while hitting it with a microwave beam. If they are able to detect the effect, they will conduct experiments that will allow them to explore the possible connections between Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.
The theory of general relativity and the theory of quantum mechanics are currently at odds, but there has to be a unifying theory that describes how things function in the universe.
It was originally published on Live Science.
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