Uncovering the mighty quantum mysteries of black holes

Bizarre quantum properties of black holes – including their mind-boggling ability to have different masses simultaneously – have been confirmed by physicists at the University of Queensland.

A UQ-led team of theoretical physicists led by Ph.D. Candidate Joshua Foo, performed calculations revealing surprising quantum phenomena of black holes.

“Black holes are an incredibly unique and fascinating feature of our Universe,” Mr Foo said.

“They form when gravity squeezes a huge amount of matter incredibly tightly into a tiny space, creating so much gravitational pull that even light can’t escape.

“It’s a phenomenon that can be triggered by a dying star.

“But until now we haven’t thoroughly investigated whether black holes exhibit some of the weird and wonderful behaviors of quantum physics.

“One such behavior is superposition, where particles can exist in multiple states at the same time on a quantum scale.

“This is most often illustrated by Schrödinger’s cat, which can be dead and alive at the same time.

“But with black holes, we wanted to see if they could have very different masses at the same time, and it turns out they do.

“Imagine being both wide and tall and at the same time short and thin – it’s a situation that is intuitively confusing since we’re anchored in the world of traditional physics.

“But that’s reality for quantum black holes.”

To uncover this, the team developed a mathematical framework that allows us to ‘place’ a particle outside of a theoretical mass-superimposed black hole.

Mass was specifically considered because it is a distinctive feature of a black hole and it is plausible that quantum black holes inherently exhibit mass superposition.

The co-leader of the research, Dr. Magdalena Zych, said the research actually reinforces the assumptions made by pioneers of quantum physics.

“Our work shows that the very early theories of Jacob Bekenstein — an American and Israeli theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to the foundation of black hole thermodynamics — were on the money,” she said.

“He postulated that black holes can only have masses that have certain values, meaning they have to fall into certain bands or ratios — that’s how the energy levels of an atom work, for example.

“Our modeling showed that these superimposed masses were indeed in certain fixed bands or ratios – as predicted by Bekenstein.

“We didn’t think such a pattern would occur, so the fact that we found this evidence was quite surprising.

“The universe reveals to us that it is always stranger, more mysterious and more fascinating than most of us could have ever imagined.”

The research was published in Physical Verification Letters.