A Study Suggests Black Holes Can Create Space Lasers--Just Like Einstein Thought

The discovery may someday help us find the most elusive substances in the universe.

BY DARREN ORF
PUBLISHED: FEB 16, 2024 8:00 AM EST



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• Gravitational waves are known disturbances in the fabric of space-time caused a variety of sources, including supermassive black holes, stellar-mass black holes, neutron stars, pulsars, supernova, and various mergers of these celestial objects.
  
  
• A new paper theorizes that gravitational waves could possibly propagate across the universe in the form of a “gravitational laser.”
  
  
• However, this theory relies on a boson known as the axion, which is one of the leading and very hypothetical candidates that could explain dark matter.

If the abundant discoveries of Albert Einstein somehow formed a superhero cinematic universe, then “gravitational lasers” would be the ultimate team-up blockbuster.

In 1916, Einstein theorized the existence of gravitational waves as part of this General Theory of Relativity (though at the time he doubted we’d ever be able to detect them). But only a year later, the former patent clerk also revealed his quantum theory of radiation. in which he detailed the idea of “stimulated emission of radiation”—the “ser” in laser.

Now, a new paper published on the preprint archive arXiv theorizes that it’s possible gravitational waves could propagate across the universe as a laser. Few sentences get more Einstein than that.

“Stimulated radiation and gravitational waves (GW) are two of the most important predictions made by Albert Einstein,” University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and study author Jing Liu wrote in the paper. “We demonstrate that stimulated GW radiation can occur within gravitational atoms, which consist of Kerr black holes and the surrounding boson clouds formed through superradiance.”

More:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a46774280/gravitational-lasers/