'Smaller than the tiniest scale in nature': Physicists made a black hole out of light and used it to test Stephen Hawking's elusive radiation theory

A strand of optical fiber is doing something no telescope ever could: mimicking the edge of a black hole. Physicists have used fiber optics to simulate Hawking radiation, the faint thermal glow that Stephen Hawking predicted should slowly leak from black holes, and for the first time, they watched that light push back on the simulated black hole that created it.

It's a remarkable workaround. Real black holes are nearly impossible to study up close, but this lab-based simulation gave researchers a rare, hands-on window into one of physics' most elusive phenomena.

The findings offer the first experimental clue about how that gentle radiation pressure might, over vast stretches of time, cause a real black hole to slowly evaporate. It's a process so gradual it has never been observed directly, but now, at least, scientists have something tangible to work with.