First Black Hole For Light Created On Earth 244
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."
Plagiarism? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:First priority. (Score:5, Insightful)
But then how would they get their free publicity and 15 minutes?!
Re:First priority. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Welcome to the presentation of our next project, The Nightbringer."
Re:uhhh... how much energy does it take? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fresnel Lens (Score:5, Insightful)
Narimanov and Kildishev reasoned that it should be possible to build a device that makes light curve inwards towards its centre in a similar way. They calculated that this could be done by a cylindrical structure consisting of a central core surrounded by a shell of concentric rings.
Superficially, sounds kind of like a Fresnel lens [wikipedia.org].
Re:uhhh... how much energy does it take? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Very obvious civilian application (Score:4, Insightful)