LIMITS on the way fluids can behave have emerged from a theoretical study of black holes in 10-dimensional space.
Dam Thanh Son of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his colleagues used string theory to model a 10-dimensional black hole – a mathematical entity rather than a real astrophysical object – as a liquid. They focused on two properties of the fluid: viscosity and entropy density, which is a measure of its internal disorder. Son’s team found that the ratio of these two values is a constant that can be expressed as a combination of fundamental constants from the quantum world.…
