  We propose an experimental scheme to observe the Gibbons-Hawking effect in
the acoustic analog of a 1+1-dimensional de Sitter universe, produced in an
expanding, cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensate. It is shown that a two-level
system created at the center of the trap, an atomic quantum dot interacting
with phonons, observes a thermal Bose distribution at the de Sitter
temperature.
