[ad_1]
Black holes are notable for many things, especially their simplicity. They’re just … holes. Those are “black”. This simplicity allows us to draw striking parallels between black holes and other branches of physics. For example, a team of researchers has shown that a special type of particle can exist around a pair of black holes in a similar way to how an electron can exist around a pair of black holes. hydrogen atoms – the first example of a “gravitational molecule”. This strange object can give us hints about the identity of dark matter and the ultimate nature of space time.
Plowing the field
To understand how the new research works, which was published in September in the prepress database arXiv, explains the existence of a gravitational molecule, we must first explore one of the most fundamental aspects – yet unfortunately we hardly ever talk about it – of modern physics: the field.
Related: The 12 strangest objects in the universe
A field is a mathematical tool that tells you what you might expect to find as you travel from one place to another in the universe. For example, if you’ve ever seen a televised weather report about temperatures in your area, you’re watching a spectator-friendly representation of a pitch – as you travel around your city or state, you’ll know what kind of temperatures you’re likely to find and where (and if you must bring a jacket).
This type of field is known as a “scalar” field, because “scalar” is the wacky mathematical way of saying “just a single number”. There are other types of fields out there in earth-physics, such as “vector” and “tensor” fields, which provide more than one number for each position in spacetime. (For example, if you see a map of wind speed and direction sketched on the screen, you are looking at a vector field.) But for the purposes of this research paper, we just need to know about the scalar type.
The atomic power pair
In the heyday of the mid-20th century, physicists took the concept of the field – which had existed for centuries at that point, and was utterly antiquated for mathematicians – and went to town with it.
They realized that fields are not only useful mathematical gimmicks, but actually describe something super-fundamental about the inner workings of reality. They found, basically, that everything in the universe is really a field.
Related: The 11 most beautiful mathematical equations
Take the humble electron. We know from quantum mechanics that it is quite difficult to define exactly where an electron is at any given moment. When quantum mechanics first emerged, this was a pretty bad mess to figure out and untangle, until the field came.
In modern physics, we represent the electron as a field, a mathematical object that tells us where we are likely to locate the electron the next time we look. This field reacts to the world around it – say, due to the electrical influence of a nearby atomic nucleus – and changes to change where we should see the electron.
The end result is that electrons can only appear in certain regions around an atomic nucleus, giving rise to the whole field of chemistry (I’m simplifying a bit, but you get my point).
Friends of the black hole
And now the black hole part. In atomic physics, you can completely describe a file elementary particle (like an electron) in terms of three numbers: its mass, its spin, and its electric charge. And in gravitational physics, you can completely describe a black hole in terms of three numbers: its mass, its spin, and its electron charge.
Coincidence? The jury is out on this one, but for now we can use this similarity to better understand black holes.
In the slang language of particle physics we just explored, you can describe a file atom like a tiny nucleus surrounded by the electron field. That electron field responds to the presence of the nucleus and allows the electron to appear only in certain regions. The same is true for electrons around two nuclei, for example in a diatomic molecule such as hydrogen (H2.)
You can describe the environment of a black hole in a similar way. Imagine the tiny singularity of a black heart somewhat similar to the nucleus of an atom, while the surrounding environment – a generic scalar field – is similar to what a subatomic particle. That scalar field responds to the presence of the black hole and allows its corresponding particle to appear only in certain regions. And just like in diatomic molecules, you can also describe the scalar fields around two black holes, like in a binary system of black holes.
The study authors found that scalar fields may actually exist around binary black holes. Also, they can form in certain patterns that resemble how electron fields organize themselves into molecules. Thus, the behavior of scalar fields in that scenario mimics the behavior of electrons in diatomic molecules, hence the nickname “gravitational molecules”.
Why the interest in scalar fields? For one thing, we don’t understand the nature of dark matter or dark energy, and both are possible dark energy and dark matter could be made up of one or more scalar fields), just as electrons are made up of the electron field.
If dark matter is actually composed of some sort of scalar field, then this result means that dark matter would exist in a very strange state around binary black holes – the mysterious dark particles should exist in very specific orbits, just like electrons do. in atoms. But binary black holes don’t last forever; they emit gravitational radiation and eventually collide and merge into a single black hole. These scalar dark matter fields would affect all gravitational waves emitted during such collisions, because they would filter, deflect and remodel all waves passing through regions of higher dark matter density. This means that we may be able to detect this type of dark matter with sufficient sensitivity in existing gravitational wave detectors.
In short: we may soon be able to confirm the existence of gravitational molecules, and through that open a window into the hidden dark sector of our cosmos.
Originally published on LiveScience.
Source link
