Using a chain of atoms in single-file to simulate the event horizon of a black hole, a team of physicists has observed the equivalent of what we call Hawking radiation – particles born from disturbances in the quantum fluctuations caused by the black hole's break in spacetime.This, they say, could help resolve the tension between two currently irreconcilable frameworks for describing the Universe: the general theory of relativity, which describes the behavior of gravity as a continuous field known as spacetime; and quantum mechanics, which describes the behavior of discrete particles using the mathematics of probability.But in 1974, Stephen Hawking proposed that interruptions to quantum fluctuations caused by the event horizon result in a type of radiation very similar to thermal radiation.By tuning the ease with which this hopping can occur, the physicists could cause certain properties to vanish, effectively creating a kind of event horizon that interfered with the wave-like nature of the electrons.This suggests that Hawking radiation may only be thermal within a range of situations, and when there is a change in the warp of space-time due to gravity."