Massive black holes drag and warp the spacetime around them in extreme ways. Observing these effects firsthand is practically impossible, so physicists look for laboratory-sized analogs that behave similarly. Fluids offer one such avenue, since fluid dynamics mimics gravity if the fluid viscosity is low enough. To chase that near-zero viscosity, experimentalists turned to superfluid helium, a version of liquid helium near absolute zero that flows with virtually no viscosity. At these temperatures, vorticity in the helium shows up as quantized vortices. Normally, these tiny individual vortices repel one another, but a spinning propeller — much like the blades of a blender — draws tens of thousands of these vortices together into a giant quantum vortex.
With that much concentrated vorticity, the team saw interactions between waves and the vortex surface that directly mirrored those seen in black holes. In particular, they detail bound states and black-hole-like ringdown phenomena. Now that the apparatus is up and running, they hope to delve deeper into the mechanics of their faux-black holes. (Image credit: L. Solidoro; research credit: P. Švančara et al.; via Physics World)
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