An
electromagnetic black hole -- which sucks in the light surrounding it -- has been built at Southeast University in Nanjing, China for the first time. The device works like cosmological black holes in that it has gravity which is intense enough to bend the surrounding space-time, causing any matter in the neighborhood to spiral inward and create the hole itself. The earth-built 'black hole' for microwave frequencies is constructed of 60 annular strips of
meta-materials (yes, that's the stuff of
invisibility cloaks). Each strip is an intricately etched circuit board which seamlessly and smoothly connects to the strips next to it, creating both a shell and absorber section to the device. When an electromagnetic wave hits the device, it is trapped and guided through the shell region toward the core, where it is absorbed. The device, which was created by Tie Jun Cui and Qiang Cheng, converts that absorbed light into heat, meaning that future possible applications could include new ways of harvesting solar energy. Hit the read link for a fuller description of this
truly bad dude.
posted Oct 17th 2009 10:24AM
That's... kind of scary.
No kidding. This really is scary. If Meta Materials can create "electron black holes" then turning invisible IS possible, but, you'd appear as a huge gap in space.
That's one super-massive black hole.
If they at that bored, I suggest getting a girlfriend.
@ Eddy Munn
Don't worry, I got the Muse reference. Or in internet terminology: I see what you did there.
Kinda exciting. Now all those Stargate designs actually makes sense!
My theory is that I can use the electromagnetic field to create a new force engine that will power stuff like airplanes, cars, and etc but there's only one problem. It's not making it, it's actually how to make other vehicle gravity field from interacting from one another. Now if we can manage that, then it won't be a problem. =D
When I read about this a few days ago on new scientist I thought they said they hadn't managed to do this with visible light yet, which won't be easy... but should be possible.
It should be an interesting optical effect, if it works... but I wouldn't call it scary.
What if they make a bigger one and Earth gets sucked into it :O I DONT LIKE THIS!
Sure, you'd be invisible... except for the ginormous heat signature you'd put off.
Actually, you wouldn't see a giant gap where the invisible person was, the light would just bend around the person, and the things behind it would appear closer together, sort of like what those apple web cams do.
'cmon stick your finger in there.
Come one, do it. Stick your finger in there.
This device does not use gravity to "suck in" microwaves, it uses a clever materiel to funnel them towards the device's center. So, unless you or your favorite possessions are composed entirely of high energy electromagnectic waves, I think you're pretty safe.
This makes peoples flip outs over the LHC however many months back even more hilarious.
Oh well - us guys shouldn't complain, we can go back to being a shoulder to cry on!
Engrish fail.
Calling this a black hole is like calling the trashcan on your desktop a black hole, or a black t-shirt shirt.
Or your microwave oven, which also has a guide to guide waves and the cup of coffee absorbs the energy and turns it into heat.
So no this is not comparable to real risky stuff and real singularities or black holes.
What is exposed is your grasp of science though.
@Wwhat
Exactly... now if i may... FAIL!!
i see i see...but how and when will this help me a) become invisible or b) journey to other planets
Never. It can only help you get sucked into electricity plant, if you become light.
wut if it gets loose or something goes wrong and it starts 2 suck in everything and ends the world as we know it
It kinda makes the Chinese look comparatively innocent on the trade deficit and human rights then, doesn't it?
I, too, worry about your mother.
=P
STARGATE!!!
@ o.O
Except the Stargate isn't creating a "hole" it's creating a "string" between to points in space where matter is converted into pure energy and then re-integrated on the other side.
But we're one step closer to building our own Gatestation.
wormhole not blackhole
A wormhole is two blackholes put together the same thing
@Yeahitsme:
Bzzzt. Wrong answer. Two black holes are not a wormhole.
A wormhole is a "fold" (Explained using a 2-dimensional model) in space linking two sets of coordinates.
Black holes are a gravity field projected by a point of theoretical infinite density.
You might be thinking if the Einstein-Rosen bridge, but those were proved to be unstable from the moment of formation, and thus unusable even by light.
Amazing
THAT IS AWESOME!!!!
I see a backyard catastrophic accident in the futur ...
That's not likely to hap....
The Heene family of Fort Collins, Colorado is already on this. Some day soon we'll all be glued to our TV sets watching an invisible Brad Heene (the middle son) drive himself to the Denver Airport and attempt to sneak onto a flight to Cincinnati. Once there, he will work secretly as the mysterious "12th man" who helps the Bengals reach the Super Bowl.
i wouldn't be so s....
oh shi....
Looks like Candlejack has struck aga
So, basically, if you were to wear it, you'd boil to another universe in that suit? o_O
2012 guys 2012
STOP it people, before we ALL Jus.5bh4 ?$% 3 , ___________ .
RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
*gets sucked in*
This just in! It seems that prmd142 was a being comprised completely out of microwaves!
Film at eleven.
Well, everything is actually comprised of waves. This becomes apparent when you do a fourier transform and...
*Depressed "I know we're all gonna die" voice*
Run where????
Unlike black hole from the rest of the universe, these low quality knock reproductions made in China are full of lead.
And low quality plastic.
You'd expect a blackhole to suck everything in. This just absorbs the light that goes in it.
It's still a huge breakthrough though.
It comes bundled with a fortune cookie that says: "You will find yourself in a sticky situation in the wrong hole"
The thingie's design isn't specified by some American company, so probably not.
Blackhole KIRF?
Blackhole KIRF?
Blackhole KIRF?
Maoist scientists seek to dominate the world.
Your grandchildren will forget English (Spanish, German, whatever) and will be forced to speak Mandarin, the language of their Overlords.
This is their way of destorying Tibetan culture.
how did the tibetan culture become a story?
Thats worded wrong it doesnt have gravity which is intense enough to bend the surrounding space-time, causing any matter in the neighborhood to spiral inward and create the hole itself. That goes against it being a electromagnetic blackhole.
Maybe this one doesn't, but the designers at Apple in California are getting their iHole ready, and it certainly will.
@Bosco:
The iHole is even more limited in it's functionality. It only sucks your money.
Wow. I thought for once, just once, seeing as this article is about a BLACKHOLE, I could read the comments at Engadget and no one would be bashing Apple. I was wrong.
have another look at the actual article. This doesn't function by having a lot of mass....which is sort of an important distinction to make.
"it has gravity which is intense enough to bend the surrounding space-time, causing any matter in the neighborhood to spiral inward and create the hole itself."
No, this ring doesn't have intense gravity. Reason alone should have told you that, but reading the article also helps. I have no idea why both Engadget and Gizmodo and the other blogs reporting this think this thing is really a gravitational black hole. All this device does is trap light; it means we'll have more effective solar panels. That's it. It doesn't suck in matter. *bangs head against wall*
Maybe because they don't know everything in the world like you do apparently.
No its fairly obvious considering that it states that it pulls in only specific things. Not to mention everything I've read about Metamaterials is that they're for bending light. So don't get mad at Mark for being literate.
Can we get mad at Mark for being a dick and ruining our fun?
You could say it's more close to being a perfectly black (meta)material than a black hole.
Except it only absorbs a certain frequency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body
I would get mad at Mark, but when you write about something that is either misleading or wrong the uneducated just gets lost down a further spiral of stupidity which doesn't help my country of idiots.
Thank you. Calling this thing a hole of any sort is idiotic, sensationalist reporting at best. I'd honestly expected better of Engadget.
I guess being accurate and calling it a "narro-band microwave trap" wouldn't have produced the kind of blog response they are hoping for.
hope they discover mass effect or something that'll revolutionize space/air propulsion....
Hmm, how did they manage to take a picture of it?
Its a simulation images...it says it under the picture in the main article.
I have a 'brown hole' but its nothing to write home about.
Does it do anything for anyone else???
"Jackass is a GOOD thing!"™
Yeah i dont think the editors actually read the article. This "black hole" is not a super-massive object that doesn't let light escape, but a design of meta-materials with different permittivity, so that a ray of light which enters will never leave. Black holes work by bending space time, this works by playing with refraction.
This is a EM black hole using meta material techniques.
It absorbs light like a black hole but the two are different. There is no immense gravity involved. And as you can see its frequency selective.
Is this different than how the hadron collider is supposed to create black holes? Or did they get beat to the punch?
This explains the unexplained light coming from my toilet.
oddly enough, I heard about this on Buzz Out Loud a couple of days ago. Interesting if they can expand past microwave range.
I read this and was thinking that despite the text's implication they really haven't managed to generate an artificial gravity source, so the analogy to a "black hole" is flawed. More of a "black body".
if the world really ends in 2012, we know who to blame
Yup... guess we won't make it till 2012 after all...
My workplace is a black hole for cellular reception.
WOW thats really cool
they even make Kirf knockoffs of black holes LOL
Yep !
There we go ! Please mark the calendar ! This is the beginning of the END for all of us !
A couple of months to go and it's over !
I suggest to all to stop filing your income tax and spend the money before we all die !
yeah and the whole thing about 2012 a string of events that lead to the end this is one of them.
So, can we use this to get rid of all the rubbish on earth?
news says that would be used to produce energy. flash forward any one?
well...
this sucks.
I ,for one, welcome our new chinese overlords?
Does this mean we can stop being afraid of the LHC now?
Great! Now I don't have to look at "Lady" gaga's face anymore.
Will there be black hole guns in the future? Black hole powered phones? This stuff is insane
This is a geat step in understanding this world. BRAVO! for shring that kind of info.
No, no, no, no, no. No. No.
This is not a black hole. It is simply an absorber of light in certain wavelength ranges.
A black T-shirt will also convert light into heat. Go stand in the sun while wearing one, you'll soon feel it.
The device does not work like cosmological black holes - it has no additional gravitational effect and will not bend the surrounding space-time.
It's a black hole in that light which enters does not escape. Therefore it is black.
It has the same relation to a cosmological black hole that silicone implants do to silicon chips. A vague similarity in words and a couple of vaguely similar elements is all. This article is simply wrong - it's like reading about AMD Pentium 6s and how they have micro-confessors and they have lots of cash but it gets used up leaving you broke. To someone whio knows the slightest bit about the topic, that level of error is painful to read, and reveals a strong lack of physics knowledge.
this will make the the lhc aliens jealous...the end of the world as we know it
Another one of those ignorant smartasses eh, that's a bad combination though.
哈，中国人。
handshake! Let us surrond and look
lol that's funny
Why are the experimenting and wasting their time making black holes on earth? Can't they create something more useful? Also, I could see them trying to build a bigger one or other countries trying to compete... eventually all earth's light will get sucked in.
This thing is basically a fancy mirror that bends light around.
"The device works like cosmological black holes in that it has gravity which is intense enough to bend the surrounding space-time, causing any matter in the neighborhood to spiral inward and create the hole itself."
Bzzt!! Wrong! Not even close, as a matter of fact. Sorry; thanks for trying, though.
"...which sucks in the light surrounding it..."
Bzzt!! Damn! Wrong again! This device is a waveguide for *microwave* radiation, not for visible light. And since the term "light" refers to the *visible* portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, this does not "suck in light."
"...future possible applications could include new ways of harvesting solar energy."
NOW we're talking reality. This is the relevant point here; the idea that this may be a less expensive and less technologically involved way to convert solar energy to electricity via heat.
Please stick to writing about gadgets, it makes you look less ignorant
Holy shit!! This confirms it...invisibility is possible!!