Slashdot Mirror
Modeling a White Hole With Your Kitchen Sink
jamie passes along this excerpt from Wired:
"That ring of water in your kitchen sink is actually a model white hole. For the first time, scientists have shown experimentally that liquid flowing from a tap embodies the same physics as the time-reversed equivalent of black holes. When a stream of tap water hits the flat surface of the sink, it spreads out into a thin disc bounded by a raised lip, called the hydraulic jump. Physicists’ puzzlement with this jump dates back to Lord Rayleigh in 1914. More recently, physicists have suggested that, if the water waves inside the disc move faster than the waves outside, the jump could serve as an analogue event horizon. Water can approach the ring from outside, but it can’t get in."
If you check the second link in the slashdot summary you'll see that this is a serious paper, and cannot be dismissed merely by the flippant comment of a random slashdotter. Although arxiv is a preprint repository, virtually all papers you find there have ended up published in peer-reviewed publications. Anyway, an analogy can be made between any two things, and it's just a matter of degree how suitable an analogy is; it's not a black and white choice.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
It gets worse. It turns out the kid's name is "Calvin".