Traffic-signal flow analog of charged black holes

Abstract

Recent work has demonstrated a correspondence between lightlike motion in Schwarzschild black holes and signal flow in one-dimensional moving traffic. We show that this analogy extends to the Reissner-Nordström spacetime, examining the effects of black hole charge on the driving reaction time and signal flow. We show that event horizons and so-called Planck regions from stationary black hole metrics correspond to certain sure-crash zones for cars in one-dimensional traffic. The charge of a black hole can alter the size and boundaries of these sure-crash zones and, beyond a critical value, can eliminate some zones entirely.