Black Hole Analogue Discovered in South Atlantic Ocean
Vortices in the South Atlantic are mathematically equivalent to black holes, say physicists, an idea that could lead to new ways of understanding how currents transport oil and garbage across oceans
Black holes are regions of spacetime in which gravity is strong enough to prevent anything escaping, even light. These strange objects were first discovered in the early 20th century as mathematical solutions to the equations of general relativity. (It was not until much later that astronomers began to gather observational evidence of their existence.)
One of the curious features of general relativity is that the same mathematics crops up in various other situations. In recent years, for example, physicists have worked out how to create invisibility cloaks by steering light around objects using metamaterials.
Black holes steer light in the same way by bending space-time. In fact, the mathematics that describe both systems are formally equivalent. Because of that, it should come as no surprise that engineers have used metamaterials to create analogues of black holes that prevent light escaping.
Today, George Haller at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich and Francisco Beron-Vera at the University of Miami in Florida have found another analogue of a black hole, this time in the world of turbulence.
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http://www.technologyreview.com/view/518416/black-hole-analogue-discovered-in-south-atlantic-ocean/
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