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First Black Hole For Light Created On Earth

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the better-wear-a-hard-hat dept.

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."

7 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Gotta say ... by ScaledLizard · · Score: 5, Funny

    That sucks ...

  2. First priority. by HungryHobo · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    1. Re:First priority. by SpeedyDX · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But then how would they get their free publicity and 15 minutes?!

    2. Re:First priority. by Zebra_X · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    3. Re:First priority. by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 5, Funny

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

      In the current uber-politically correct climate, they're more likely to lose their funding after being accused of racism.

    4. Re:First priority. by hitnrunrambler · · Score: 5, Funny

      Now is only the could work in Cold Fusion and Death Panels!

      Now is only the could work in sentence structure!

      Apologies if you made this post without the aid of caffeine... or if you're quoting verbatim from Palin's blog (which I kinda doubted at first since it uses the words "cold fusion" but that COULD be some obscure Alaskan sexual practise)

  3. Re:uhhh... how much energy does it take? by Interoperable · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't know why a huge amount of a nano-structured meta-material would be cheaper to make than a large mirror. The device is interesting in it's own right but the application to solar power is a real stretch. It seems like every advance has to claim to be a step on the way to curing cancer or solving the energy crisis to get any attention. Even the article about magnetic monopole quasi-particles tied it back to applications to computing...possible but that certainly isn't why the discovery is interesting.

    --
    So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?