A black hole as a particle accelerator? This theory has several hooks



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Black holes are among the pure gravitational forces that pull all surrounding objects together and already it won’t let you escape.

As they approach the event horizon (editor’s note: limit beyond which the escape velocity exceeds the speed of light), objects accelerate to dizzying speeds. Therefore, some physicists claim that black holes would be perfect candidates for particle accelerators. According to them, the key to success is careful preparation, thanks to which the particles would do it they had no chance of falling into the bowels of a black hole. The Live Science portal talks about it.

A particle approaching a black hole accelerates, just like a ball we dropped off a hill. However, the particles move much faster. The event horizon is the region where the particle falls reaches the speed of light. If it goes beyond the horizon, it is lost forever. In this case, we are talking about a single, solitary particle. If we throw more of them into the black hole, the whole situation will get a lot more interesting.

Extreme accelerator

The particle accelerators we have on Earth can accelerate heavy particles up to 99% of the speed of light. But we need a lot of energy for that. It is enough that black holes exist. If we send a couple of particles into one of them, we might observe something interesting. The closer they were to the event horizon, the faster they would travel. If they flew in the right direction and speed, there is a chance they would the particles bounced off each other. One would cross the event horizon, while the other would be able to escape, flying to the edge of the horizon.

These are extremely rare events, but previous research has shown that two particles can collide together. It just depends on how close they get to the event horizon at the point of impact. But it has a problem. Scientists worked on the case purely theoretical black holes, which would have as little weight as possible. In reality, however, the vast majority of black holes are much more massive than would be appropriate for research purposes.

However, a new study has been published this year, which claims that even true black holes can act as particle accelerators. Scientists have found that particles can bounce off huge black holes. However, collisions occur at the edge of the event horizon, which means the particle is reflected it spends all the accumulated energyto get out of the gravitational grip of a black hole, but even that may not be enough. However, rotating black holes could act as particle accelerators, because in this case the collision could occur at a much greater distance from the event horizon than in the case of other black holes.

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