Physicists produce black hole plasma in the lab

Black holes are voracious: They devour large amounts of matter from gas clouds or stars in their neighbourhood. As the incoming "food" spirals faster and faster into the abyss, it becomes denser and denser, and heats up to temperatures of many millions of degrees Celsius. Before the matter finally disappears, it emits extraordinarily intense X-rays into space. This "last cry" originates from iron, one of the elements contained in this matter. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg have collaborated with colleagues at the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin and used the BESSY II synchrotron X-ray source to investigate what happens in this process.