Dumb Holes

Dumb holes (acoustic black holes) are laboratory systems in which sound waves play the role that light plays near a gravitational event horizon. When a fluid flows faster than the local speed of sound, phonons cannot propagate upstream past the sonic surface — an acoustic horizon. The same kinematic arguments that yield Hawking radiation for black holes then predict thermal phononic emission from that surface.

This site packages a source-grounded literature synthesis:

• Paper — full manuscript with verified DOIs
• Findings — figures and comparative timeline
• Methods — how sources were selected and claims classified
• Data — downloads (manuscript, citation ledger, figures)

Thesis in one sentence

Analogue gravity experiments have established that the kinematic core of the Hawking effect is robust and laboratory-accessible; they have not (and cannot by themselves) prove gravitational black-hole evaporation, but they make the underlying quantum-field-on-curved-background machinery far less speculative.

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