How to Create a Black Hole on a Lab Bench

In a lab in Nanjing, China, two researchers are mucking about with what could be called the world’s first artificial black hole–but there’s no reason for alarm. The researchers, Qiang Cheng and Tie Jun Cui, haven’t created a doomsday device, but rather a nifty experiment that harnesses the strange properties of metamaterials. Physicists have already learned how to steer light around an object within a metamaterial to create an invisibility cloak…. Now Qiang and Tie have created a metamaterial that distorts space so severely that light entering it (in this case microwaves) cannot escape.

blogs.discovermagazine.com...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/7e207690726c.jpg[/atsimg]

reply to post by Aquarius1


What exactly is metamaterial? I read a post a while back, where some one said they had been abducted, and the Aliens said scientists will soon discover a strange new matter, and call it metamaterial...does anyone remember that? It wasn't more than 9 months ago since I signed up near the start of this year...but is this a recent material, or only just discovered and named? Because that would be very intriguing to say the least if this is a new thing...I'll need to find that post...

EDIT: ok...I must have the names mixed up...because wikipedia says:

Metamaterials are artificial materials engineered to provide properties which "may not be readily available in nature"

It's not that new by the looks of it...and it's man made anyway...also...I don't think it's a black hole as such...it's just that the refractive properties of the substance bend the light to such a degree where it won't escape...optical fiber sort of does a similar thing because it needs to keep light inside, until it reaches the other end, and the light is transformed back into electrical signals...it's very different to how a black hole works...they just keep the light bouncing around inside the metamaterial most likely...

[edit on 22/10/09 by CHA0S]

A black hole isn't actually a black hole though, There is a extremely small sphere in the dark area. All they created was a hole the light wraps around. Don't get me wrong it is fascinating though. Good looking out.
S&F...

[edit on 07/16/2009 by Lichter daraus]

Metamaterial Revolution: The New Science of Making Anything Disappear

Xiang Zhang remembers the day he recognized that something extraordinary was happening around him. It was in 2000, at a workshop organized by DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to explore a tantalizing idea: that radical new kinds of engineered materials might enable us to extend our control over matter in seemingly magical ways.

The goal at hand, changing how objects interact with light, seemed at first blush to be routine; people had been manipulating visible light with mirrors and lenses and prisms nearly forever

discovermagazine.com...

The technology you are referring to is invisibility which doesn't seem to have anything to do with black holes.

[edit on 21-10-2009 by Aquarius1]

Cool find. Maybe this will swallow the earth.

Can they whip up some General Tso's while they're at it?

(Bad joke, bad joke)

Gross mislabeling of the thread, I really don't like that.
Sounds sensationalist.

Physics maybe nifty, but let's not resort to shady marketing practices on ATS.

i dont think anyone will be able to actually create a black hole ever.

not unless they can take an enormous star and collapse it into itself, until it becomes the size of a car or bucket near instantaneously. it will also have to spin at near lightspeed.....

because the blackholes that people think of, are actually the after math of a singularity acting upon space. the "blackness" is the singularity gravity sucking in everything.

no singularity; no blackhole.

cute little attempts at making blackholes (like at cern) wont last more than a mere moment. you wouldnt even be able to perceive its existence.

no singularity; no threat.

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on that note. this is cool. it has the blackhole effect (trapping light), but does little else. one thing to consider is that it isnt even grabbing the whole electromagnetic spectrum. it's only grabbing microwaves (which yes they are small, but highly energetic)

so i think that they are misrepresenting the device, if they are calling it a blackhole. i mean, whats a blackhole without gravity?

its a pretty cool concept though. I am a little curious about how they will explain how nothing exits the device. even black holes, with their infinite destructiveness and apparent doom to all, has an escapee - radiation. hawkings radiation specifically.

when you take all that matter and crush it to nothingness, you get buttloads of x-rays

It seems to me that the scientists have mimicked one of the properties of a black hole and "Discover Magazine" has labeled that a black hole.

That's cheap sensationalism and it diminishes the importance of the actual work, which I don't quite understand.

Maybe "Discover" doesn't understand it, either.