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."
Gotta say ... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually it doesn't (Score:3, Informative)
It's a lens. It only affects light (electromagnetic radiation).
It's a lens, specifically, that bends light into a spiral path that ends in the middle of the lens. It could presumably be used to amplify light into a small point. The same small point, regardless of the way the light strikes the surface of the lens, making it potentially useful for solid-state light gathering.
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Re:Actually it does (Score:2)
You sir are wrong!
This electromagnetic radiation either generates a photopositive reaction or it does not.
First priority. (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.
Re:First priority. (Score:5, Insightful)
But then how would they get their free publicity and 15 minutes?!
Re:First priority. (Score:4, Funny)
They could call it a brown hole?
Re:First priority. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:First priority. (Score:4, Funny)
Call it cold fusion.
Say it harnesses zero-point energy.
Put porn in their research.
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Thought it was haiku
Too many syllables though
So I guess it's not
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Call it cold fusion
Claim zero-point energy
Add porn to research
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I favor "pointy fusion porn".
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Talk about hype and abusing scientific termology. Their next project will be on solar cells titled "Generating free subatomic charged particles via a massive nuclear fusion source"
Re:First priority. (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)
Cold fusion is a reality! (Score:5, Funny)
Now is only the could work in Cold Fusion and Death Panels!
Cold fusion is what happens when two ice cubes stick together.
Re:First priority. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Welcome to the presentation of our next project, The Nightbringer."
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Thank you. I am Nightbringer, as you have surmised. And I'm glad to be here. Are you The Food?
Re: a few new names (Score:2)
"Your puny", "Don't be shy" and "He just wants"?
Yeah, they're taken.
Re:First priority. (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.
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Simply call it "Electromagnetic Sponge"
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Just don't flick the switch from "suck" to "blow".
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FTA... In their device, the core converts the absorbed light into heat... So, it is be reradiated out the bottom/top of the cylinder. Just one more reason why you are right to call it a waveguide, albeit a very advanced one.
-l
Re:First priority. (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.
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Aw geez, now you've done it ... the birthers are going to want to see the original birth certificate, or it didn't happen! They'll rename it the Kenyan hole, and say it's not eligible for funding.
Re:First priority. (Score:5, Funny)
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Until the smart dolphins who've already left shake their heads at mankind (and their stupid brethren) that stayed behind.
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Until the smart dolphins who've already left shake their heads at mankind (and their stupid brethren) that stayed behind.
You're saying some stayed on porpoise [instantrimshot.com] ?
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Except they're in on the plot against us. ^^
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I believe elrous0 was referring to the timeline of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, wherein all the dolphins leave Earth just before the Vogons destroy it.
Re:First priority. (Score:4, Funny)
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The LHC was just waiting for the right time... ;-)
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I completely agree, they need to fix the name lol. Although it is catchy, something like "light sucker" or something would make more sense.
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First priority: Install one above every street light so we can get our lovely speckled black skies back. :)
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Just direct them to this reassuring website:
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/ [hasthelarg...rldyet.com]
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My thoughts too. Yet another technical term to be diluted into meaningless by ignorance and avarice.
Just add it on the pile with artificial intelligence, robotic, virtual reality, and tin foil hat.
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Yeah, just call it what it is -- a Light Sucker.
Which the masses will understand as the long-theorized counterpart to the everyday item, the Dark Sucker. [ethereal.net]
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So if we run it in reverse, do we now have a Light Sabre? Or just a way to microwave people at a distance?
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"It's a black hole in the same way my bedroom is when I shut the door." - Azathoth. 0-2009
WTFO, Man. (Score:2)
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They do, they also saw an article saying that it will always fail due to the Universe not wanting to see a Higgs boson.
So they manned up and found a way to make the black hole without also making a Higgs boson and hence condemning themselves to failure via time travel.
It was nice to have known you guys (Score:2)
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Don't worry, the universe itself will travel back and time and prevent it. Think about it... Mr. Universe... time travel. It's Arnold. He's the one stopping the LHC.
It's an interesting development.... (Score:5, Interesting)
But I have definite issues with the last paragraph of the article
The article gives no indication that light passing near the device will get sucked into it, but only that all light hitting the device gets sucked into the center. So instead of requiring those huge parabolic mirrors, you'll instead require these huge cylindrical structures. Would still have a nice advantage in that no tracking or steering devices would be required since light hitting it from any side gets "sucked in", but it would still require a considerable amount of real estate to deploy assuming that they can both scale it down (to handle visible light) and scale it up (to make the amount of light absorbed represent a non-trivial amount of power).
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It could well reduce the total light gathering area needed in low light conditions though. A typical solar cell is not a perfect black. Some fraction of the light reflects back. By capturing all of it you need a smaller area for the same effect. In addition, this could gather light omnidirectionally, a big benefit when the light is diffuse.
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The article gives no indication that light passing near the device will get sucked into it, but only that all light hitting the device gets sucked into the center. So instead of requiring those huge parabolic mirrors, you'll instead require these huge cylindrical structures.
No, think about it. All light that intersects the volume of the device from any direction, vs. only light parallel to the optical axis and incident on the concave side of the mirror. It's obvious that this device will collect a lot mo
I am curious (Score:2, Interesting)
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I am curious why you ask? It didn't occur to me that anything more than EM radiation would have been affected..
Black Hole for Light (Score:2, Funny)
oh God! (Score:2)
Military application. (Score:2)
This could easily be the next smoke rounds. Imagine being able to block light past specific points on a battlefield. You could effectively blind the enemy in darkness, or create soft cover for your movements. It would also absorb laser tracking and targeting devices, leaving many modern weapons systems moot.
Make no mistake about it, this is a very important technology for the battle field.
Interesting idea, but... (Score:2)
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The materials they use for this are useful for the military, which everyone agreed on when they were first discovered.
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Oh whatever... (Score:2)
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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].
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Superficially, sounds kind of like a Fresnel lens [wikipedia.org].
In the sense that both bend light, yes. Otherwise, not so much. It more closely resembles a super optical fiber. The light is always bent towards the core.
Don't bother RTFA... (Score:4, Funny)
There's nothing to see.
Ha! I crack myself up.
Sleath - cloaking devices (Score:2)
Scientists and engineers are trying to emulate that trick by designing materials that could constitute the next-next (or next-next-next) generation of stealth. Some of their ideas sound like they sprang from the imaginations of Gene Roddenberry or J.K. Rowling, with phrases like “cloaking device” and “invisibility carpet” popping up as freque
Emperor's new... (Score:2)
This black hole that sucks up invisible light would go _great_ with the emperor's new clothes. ;)
All we need to do now is make it bigger. (Score:2)
Make tiny black holes with an event horizon of say 1 foot. Then we have the ultimate trashcan. We can dump nuclear wast in it and nothing will come out except for perhaps according to some theories radiation. Which we cannot see or feel so there forth it must be harmless.
Very obvious civilian application (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Very obvious civilian application (Score:4, Insightful)
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Except that many police forces are using lasers instead of radar to detect speed now.
And if you want to use something similar to be invisible to a laser, you might just end up being invisible (depending on the laser frequencies you absorb). Which would be pretty darked cool, except when traffic doesn't see you at night.
Re:Very obvious civilian application (Score:5, Funny)
Military Application? (Score:3, Interesting)
Are we looking at the next generation of stealth technology?
Re:Military Application? (Score:5, Funny)
Are we looking at the next generation of stealth technology?
If you're looking at it wouldn't it be the last generation stealth technology ?
Optical black hole?? (Score:2)
As far as I understand, given that there's no invisibility cloaks working for those frequency and that this is a variation on these device, I doubt the experimenter's claim that they'll be able to build an optical black hole soon..
Where're the jokes? (Score:2)
I'm surprised there haven't been any "sounds like my ex-wife" jokes yet.
obviously, we need a way to put this in paint (Score:2)
"How much more black could it be? None. None more black."
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What's even worse is that they start out calling it the first black hole for light and immediately admit that is isn't actually a black hole for light yet.
In similar news, I just broke the 100m dash world record. Well I walked 100 meters to work, which is almost the same.
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Re:uhhh... how much energy does it take? (Score:5, Funny)
That said, all that incident EM radiation is gonna really heat it up
Unless they're very clever with creating it, such that only wavelengths usable by the solar panel are refracted into the centre. Anyway, if they think they can do that by the end of 2009, can they make me a man-sized invisible hamsterball? Invisible zorbing would be an interesting experience.
Re:uhhh... how much energy does it take? (Score:4, Funny)
can they make me a man-sized invisible hamsterball? Invisible zorbing would be an interesting experience.
Actually it would be a black hamsterball.
And if that's the objective for 2009, it's quite easier to achieve by simply painting it black. Anyway, you'll just end up with a pretty pissed off hamster.
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It strikes me now that it would be completely back as seen from the inside, however, which would limit its usability unless you mounted cameras around the rim.
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Actually, it would be black on the outside but lit up on the inside......all of the light would be funneled to the core.
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If it DOES get really hot, sounds like a co-generation opportunity. Hot water and electricity from the same roof unit.
How much energy would THAT save an average household??
--PM
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Unless they're very clever with creating it, such that only wavelengths usable by the solar panel are refracted into the centre.
That happens by default. Metamaterials only operate correctly on a very narrow band of frequencies.
Re:uhhh... how much energy does it take? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly right (Score:2)
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I doubt it would be cheaper to make, but a mirror reflects light from one direction and if you have concave shape focuses that light at a certain point, but for that to work the light has to be entering from the right direction relative to the focus point (normal straight in the front but doesn't necessarily have to be
This system would work regardless of which direction the light enters from, which means it works under very difuse light source. It also means you don't need a tracking system to keep the mirr
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Agreed. I came back to read the comments because I had this same though. The article says they could replace the huge parabolic mirrors used in solar collection. So they want to replace a large mirror, with a large fuunnel made of obscure expensive materials? How does that help?
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Those of us that do IT support for friends & family know that Someone Else's Problems have a nasty habit of becoming Our problems at a moment's notice.
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Re:Shouldn't we give the Cui and Cheng more credit (Score:5, Funny)
Interesting culture you've got there. Where I work the theorists/computational groups find the experimentalists indispensible and vice versa. The experimentalists provide the grounding in reality and provide the final fruition of all the theory/computer work. The theory+computation guides the experiments and increases the odds that the experiments'll work the first time out. Everyone's better off, and everyone knows it, with the exception of just one guy who's generally hard to deal with anyway (even the other experimentalists don't get on with him.)
--PM
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It's just warped, I say! Warped!
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Well, if you'd just pull your head out of your ...
Oh. Never mind. Keep looking.
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Huh? The description you quote seems like a pretty reasonable qualitative description of an astrophysical black hole to me. Black holes have a region of capture orbits [fourmilab.ch] outside the horizon, where nearby matter spirals inwards.
Not that astrophysical black holes have anything whatsoever to do with the electromagnetic devices referred to in the article, of course.
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Capture orbits have to do with loss of energy by way of gravitational radiation. Gravity around a black hole is just like gravity anywhere else. They do not magically suck things in.
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Charlie Murphy: Damnit, Rick James, I told you to stop calling me that.
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Only the portion of the bursts that actually hit the device. The "Event horizon" here is limited to the device's physical size. I guess you could hide behind it if you know the burst is coming and its direction...
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First think I thought of when I read the summary...