  Optical space in electromagnetic metamaterials may be engineered to emulate
various exotic space-time geometries. However, these metamaterial models are
limited in many respects. It is believed that real physical space-time strongly
fluctuates on the Planck scale. These fluctuations are usually described as
virtual black holes. Static metamaterial models introduced so far do not
exhibit similar behavior. Here we demonstrate that thermal fluctuations of
optical space in hyperbolic metamaterials lead to creation of virtual
electromagnetic black holes. This effect is very large if the dielectric
component of the metamaterial exhibits critical opalescence.
