First Black Hole For Light Created On Earth

An anonymous reader writes "An electromagnetic 'black hole' that sucks in surrounding light has been built for the first time. The device, which works at microwave frequencies, may soon be extended to trap visible light, leading to an entirely new way of harvesting solar energy to generate electricity. A theoretical design for a table-top black hole to trap light was proposed in a paper published earlier this year by Evgenii Narimanov and Alexander Kildishev of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Their idea was to mimic the properties of a cosmological black hole, whose intense gravity bends the surrounding space-time, causing any nearby matter or radiation to follow the warped space-time and spiral inwards."

Comments

First priority.

[HungryHobo]

They need to stop calling it a black hole or the ignorant masses will decide it's going to end the world.

Re:First priority.

[Zebra_X]

For sure... and it's not a black hole. It's a very well designed waveguide that is able to channel microwaves to an absorbant material without re-radiating any of the incoming energy.

Very obvious civilian application

[Shag]

The Chinese paper refers to effectiveness at 18GHz, which just so happens to be in the "K" band of radar frequencies. You know, the one police like to use.

So all these guys need to do is make a dashboard- or grille-mounted radar absorber to obsolete the radar detector and they'll be so rich they'll forget their ultimate goal of destroying the world or whatever.