Physicists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California have been able to create a “Molecular Black Hole” in the lab using X-Rays. The team has concentrated the full intensity of a powerful X-Ray laser in a single iodine molecule. The effect of this experiment was the formation of a microscopic black hole that devours everything around it. The instrument used to achieve the result was Coherent X-ray Imaging instrument.
The result of this experiment came out as a surprise even for the researchers. Sebastien Boutet, the coordinator of the team said that we should not worry about this. In order to create a black hole that’s actually dangerous, you would need a laser that is “a hundred times more intense than what you would get if you focused all the sunlight that hits the Earth’s surface onto a thumbnail…”
Physicists have been doing similar tests in the past, but this time the X-Ray laser used this time was much stronger and more focused. The microscopic vacuum began to consume electrons from the rest of the molecule, just like a black hole that is observed in space. In just 30 femtoseconds, the molecular black hole exploded.
After the black hole has exploded, the iodine molecule that was under test remained without at least 50 electrons, which were consumed by that microscopic vacuum. Men of science say that they have to repeat the experiment in order to better observe the phenomenon that occurs at the molecule level.
The result of the experiment was published in Nature journal.
