Physics Nature Is Weird

We built a "black hole on a chip" and realized that stuff sucked into the abyss might actually be saved.

arXiv · March 18, 2026 · 2603.16765

Eric J. Sung, Charles A. Stafford

The Takeaway

By using superconductors to mimic a black hole's event horizon, researchers discovered that quantum information might not be destroyed as previously thought. This analogue system suggests that lost data could reappear through a resonance effect, allowing one of the universe's greatest mysteries to be studied in a lab.

From the abstract

In a recent paperarXiv:2205.06279, Danielson et al. demonstrated that the mere presence of a black hole causes universal decoherence of quantum superpositions (dubbed the DSW decoherence). This result has profound implications for the interplay of quantum mechanics and gravity. We analyze decoherence in a superconducting analoguearXiv:1709.06154of the event horizon of a black hole, where Andreev reflection plays the role of Hawking radiation. We consider a normal metal interferometer threaded by