First Ever Black Hole Created on Earth

October 15, 2009

No, CERN hasn't started slamming protons into each other at the Large Hadron Collider early. And no, a top secret warp drive hasn't been test-driven in Earth orbit (not that we know of anyway). In reality, an electromagnetic black hole has been fabricated in the laboratory for the first time.

Before you start getting concerned that the planet will soon be swallowed up by a rampaging singularity, the black hole in question isn't the gravitational behemoth you might find after a supernova or in the center of the Milky Way. This particular table-top black hole mimics the curvature of space-time, creating a fabricated event horizon that swallows electromagnetic radiation at microwave wavelengths.

The best thing is that this experiment isn't just for curiosity-sake, it has a practical application that could revolutionize future solar panel design, making the production of solar energy a lot more efficient than it is currently.

According to previous theoretical studies, mimicking the curvature of space-time around an analog black hole should be possible, guiding electromagnetic radiation around a cylindrical structure "consisting of a central core surrounded by a shell of concentric rings" (as explained by the New Scientist article). The theory is that a material of increasing permittivity (a characteristic of the medium electromagnetic radiation travels through, influencing the electrical component of the photons) could be used between the outer and inner surface of the cylinder. If the transition is smooth enough, and the permittivity eventually matches that of the cylinder core, the photons should be absorbed by the core, rather than reflected.

Although the physics sounds complicated (and I think I'd have to see the apparatus up-close to fully appreciate what is going on), the result is astonishing. What's more, theory has just been turned into a working model by Tie Jun Cui and Qiang Cheng at the Southeast University in Nanjing, China. This is the world's first working black hole.

By designing a printed circuit board with an intricate pattern of "meta-materials" (i.e. a man-made material that can alter the characteristics of the passage of electromagnetic radiation), a steady permittivity gradient was created, ensuring the photons' absorption by the core. The physicists used microwaves, not optical light, in this set-up as the wavelength of microwaves is easier to manage (the wavelength of microwaves in the electromagnetic spectrum is longer than optical light, so larger scale meta-material patterns could be made).

"When the incident electromagnetic wave hits the device, the wave will be trapped and guided in the shell region towards the core of the black hole, and will then be absorbed by the core," says Cui. "The wave will not come out from the black hole."

However, the microwave energy has to go somewhere (this black hole is still bound by physical laws), and in Cui and Cheng's black hole, microwave energy is converted into heat.

This sounds like fun, but how can this technique be used in solar panels? Although optical light can't be manipulated so easily, Cui is confident that by the end of this year that he will be able to manufacture an optical black hole. If this can be done, then it isn't such a stretch of the imagination to think that a meta-material surface could replace traditional photovoltaic cells to literally suck sunlight into an array of tiny black holes printed in a circuit board.

Image: The experimental results of the black hole when the microwave beam is pointed at different angles from the central core (or "event horizon"). Credit: Qiang Cheng and Tie Jun Cui.

Publication: An electromagnetic black hole made of metamaterials, arXiv:0910.2159v1 [physics.optics], via New Scientist.

Comments

[vimax]

Very interesting, is this Black Hole really exist?

[MattyFatty]

Reading these comments has not only killed the last 20 minutes of work but made me giggle out loud quite a bit...not so much the comments themselves, but the image of you retards sitting behind your monitor getting rather hostile over other retards retarded comments. You space nerds are funny.

[Andres Villarreal]

The sources of misinformation seem to be at least two: "electromagnetic black hole" became "black hole" without a single explanation, and second "we can simulate the black hole using electromagnetic fields and metamaterials" became "electromagnetic black hole", as far as I can see, as a word play done by the authors. As it happens, the simulation is quite incomplete, since the idea of a black hole is that nothing, not even light, can escape from its field, but in this case only one kind of energy is attracted. This is like calling my bike a monster truck because ants, if squashed by my bike, are just as dead as if squashed by a monster truck.

[Ivan]

I cool.. this a brilliant idea of absorbing spread out electrons into a tiny place and absorb it with solar panel to generate electricity.

Solar energy is the next generation energy producer if the electricity we consume came from solar energy then global warming is eliminated.

Think about it.. It's one of today's most dangerous problem of wither we will survive the next 50 - 100 yrs if global warming is increasingly affecting.

If you heard the news that a cabinet members of Maldives are taking there meeting underwater to address that there country is drowning due global warming.

Here in Philippines we experience a 3 consecutive typhoon this month and this is not normal which causes about $5 billion damage due to floods, transportation damage and food shortage.

[Clatoo]

Black hole do exist. We use them all the time to get from here to there. S-4 rocks !

[bob selmerf]

sooooooooo hows that hope and change working for ya???

[rc]

"Also, EVERYONE should learn to spell and use proper grammer before they respond."

If I had a dollar for every time someone bitched about grammar and spelled it wrong I would be a very rich man.

[Calcul8tor]

From the short and cursory story, I would say this has nothing to do with black holes, but rather it represents a photon "trapper" of the sort. It isn't some super "nucleus dense" collection of matter that bends spacetime:it rather doesn't warp gravity at all. I would like to pummle mercilessly the author that created the misleading hyped article title...

[WallMountedHDD]

The stupidity that is abounding here is far more astonishing than the claims of the article. Seriously, am I on youtube?

[Sylvia]

I saluted the religious people in giving their views on their status of faith/belief.
The message are meant to the non religious people for their information, to be at least aware that they are certain class of people who describe things based on the belief they have.

[Mere]

Why waisting time and money on this bloody blackhole technology, when there are uncured health diseases out there like AIDS.Get real scientiest and focus on something useful and new.

[Zac]

What a great way of thinking green for the planet

[Brian C]

To the moron who says that this article does not affect the oil industry, it actually Does!!!

Uhm solar powered cars?? electricity??? , the more efficient clean energy (such as solar energy) is produced/gathered the more appealing for it to be replacement for fuel..

[archduke]

First one created on earth my a--!
Heck, my sister-in-law was born in 1976! so there !

[Shinara]

Amazing.Simply amazing.

[simon]

Yup this is what we need.. Not a cure for cancer.. But we need smaller solar panels.. Just don't understand where the priorities are..

[daveG]

To the moron who wrote that the oil industry should be afraid of this new find.(oil exec and gas pumpers)
1.What is the relationship you use to make that comment concerning this particular article? 2.Without the fossil fuels you would not have the computer chip, that with its use has allowed us to find there are better ways of using/providing energy. 3. Just think once we have destroyed ourselves or that destruction comes by some other means - nuclear energy might become the 'fossil fuels' that provide advances beyond ours to the next species, or the human being in the future, if we survive ourselves, NO WE CANNOT KILL THE PLANET WITH EXCESSIVE CO2, 600,000 YEARS AGO THERE WAS MORE CO2 ON THE PLANET AND NO HUMANS WERE AROUND, NO INDUSTRIES. SO PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW WE ARE GOING TO KILL THE PLANET - THIS IS THE MORONIC VIEW THAT WE SHOULD BE BICKERING AGAINST - NOT THE MORONIC VIEW STATED BY THE CHURCH, IF SUCH CLAIMS CAN BE VALIDATED - I HAVE NEVER BEEN PREACHED TO, IN MY 25 YEARS OF CHURCH SPORADIC ATTENDANCE, THAT WE SHOULD STAY AWAY FROM SCIENCE - PEOPLE USE THIS ARGUMENT TO BOAST THEIR EGO AT THE SAME TIME IT PROVES THE EGO IS AN IDIOT. JUST BECAUSE IT WAS A BELIEF AT ONE TIME - AND NOT ALL CHURCHES WERE IN COMPLIANCE WITH THIS BELIEF EITHER.

[hmm]

how come every comment page turns into an opinionated smarty pants match? sometimes i do wish the government would regulate the internet so i could believe again that people aren't as dumb as this.

oh yeah, as for the article... that is awesome. science is awesome.

[Cotz]

Yes this is intriguing, and possibly another energy source break through, but as with any form of energy, it does you no good at all, unless it can be called upon when needed.
We can already produce all the darned energy we could ever need. That's not to say that we can produce it as cheaply as we'd all like, but we can produce it. The problem is that we have no efficient or cost effective methods for STORAGE and RETRIEVAL.
As for Christains thinking the world is ending...I am one, it's not ending...it's only the beginning...and there is another force out there that is way beyond what we know and bicker about here...peace...

[fgesrhshse]

Zig-Zag, if you were smart, you'd be able to spell the word "sentence" correctly. For the record, it is, in fact, grammatically correct to start a sentence with the word "and," it just shouldn't be used frequently in one setting. It's abother way of saying "Also," "Additionally," etc.

I'm sorry. It just bugs me when people criticize other people's grammar and spelling, when their grammar and spelling isn't that great either.

[zero_xavier]

Very interesting, this should increase the efficiency of solar paneling greatly. The same principals may also be used to make electrical wiring more efficient.

[amnon]

China wins!!! we lose... man those guys I swear... you know their already way past the discovery that they have just announced... they are already running on 5g networks and using hand-helds with over 10 tera bytes... and us... we lose again...lmao!!!!

[RC]

"One thing you need to take into account. Black holes are theoretical. Meaning they may not even exist" That is one of the stupidest things I have ever read. That was a statement that people were making 20 years ago!!!!! Pick up a recent book or periodical smart guy. Ever heard of NOVA?

[Don Holsten]

I am intrigued indeed, If this technology can be miniaturized onto circuit boards, they should technically take up much less space than conventional solar panels, thereby increasing the capacity to produce electricity in equal space constraints. If the cost can be structured competitive to regular solar panels, there is something to be excited about here! If this can be taken to the next level utilizing nano tubes, the net gain would be awesome!

I am also amazed at the number of babbling morons that even attempt opinions on a science page!

[ReaperV]

As to the last few comments (which were made while KeyPad was giving me issues), I have to say this: Even though they are talking about experimenting with micro-waves, it does not mean that they are only heating stuff up with a 'microwave.' The heat caused by sending waves of a short frequency into an object is a kinetic bi-product, and not the focus of the experiment here. The article states that the poster does not have access to the actual physical device, nor the in-depth experimental data. In addition, they are talking about a meta-material, which is far from being a hotdog. This article is to tell us that some progress in science was made, not the procedures of the experiment. Don't think this is as simple as a lot of you are making it out to be. What is NOT being said is much more important than what IS being said in this case. I have to tell you, the concept here is far more advanced than Physics 101 or Einstein's early theories... even if they are based on them.

[mac]

Would you people please learn to spell. Or at least let your computer do it. Turn on the spell check. Some day it might be "crusial". That whole, seemingly intelligent statement, ruined by one misspelled word.

[Zig-Zag]

"You people are all fruity @ssholes. And your stupidity verifies the fact.

Posted by: Smart@ss | October 17, 2009 at 12:21 AM "

If you are so smart, you should know you dont start a sentance with "and".

Fail

[homero]

Funny to see how "smart people" think they're better than the rest.

[ReaperV]

First of all, black holes do not "destroy" anything, since matter cannot be created or destroyed... it merely 'reconfigures' the matter, so please at least understand the words you speak before spilling the ignorant bile of your lacking minds. Secondly, this is not "dangerous" in the slightest, because it takes infinitely (well, at least a very large number that I will not be calculating here) more mass travelling at much greater speeds to cause any damage to an object as large as the Earth; at least in the sense of releasing enough energy to make time and space collapse (enough to make a "damaging" black hole capable of doing anything to the Earth, and no, a black hole cannot be created on a small scale such as somewhere on the face of our planet). In short, some of you idiots talking about "wasting money" are basically saying "fk it, I want humanity to die in the next 1,000 years"... we can NOT continue the way we are going. Kinetic energy is the only thing we directly use currently, and it is by far the simplest and LEAST EFFICIENT way to get energy for 'work' out of a fuel source. The bi-products of what we currently use for energy (radiation/heat, green house gasses, and toxic wastes) are much more harmful in the short-term AND the long-term than that of utilizing solar energy in the way described here. You think this absorption of solar energy is harmful? The impact of taking the energy that normally the Earth would absorb DOES exist, but what it is, is not clear yet. What IS clear, is that the impact on the environment in the long-term would be much more natural and less damaging than anything we currently do or use. This technology can not only harness and redistribute existing energy that flows around us (currently completely unutilized), but can also help re-distribute wealth globally away from the energy-dominant markets (which control more of YOUR lives than you could even imagine). Even if you don't appreciate or understand this, you need to hope that the research is not killed by corporations trying to maintain the status-quo. This can potentially be a stepping-stone for Humankind's space-colonization, so stop this complaining about what your unfounded fears might be... they are all groundless and irrational.

[Heather]

Otis, excellent point! I absolutely agree with you! Just wondering if the theoretical mathematical formulas are the same here.

[Gregory Dupre]

So if I understand this correctly, the Chinese have proven that you heat things up with microwaves. WOW! Can you imagine the possible applications.

[Otis]

One thing you need to take into account. Black holes are theoretical. Meaning they may not even exist, there are other explainations for the back ground radiation and red shift in light over distances. So haow can they create something that addmitedly can't say exists in the first place. Don't believe everthing you hear. Science is not authouratative or imperical.

[JIMMY BALLZ]

instead of f*ckin with the solar system, actually do something useful and create a f*ckin health care system

[Heather]

Cool article! Can’t say as I understand it though, but certainly interesting. I wonder if it is actually the black hole mathematics from Einstein’s curved spacetime formulas or a similarity. I mean, they said it mimics the real thing, but what’s that mean mathematically? Anybody have an answer to that? Very interesting.

To those who made religious comments here, get educated about science and history before making straw man attacks. It pitifully shows how ignorant you are.

[kree]

Chevron 9...encoded

[Hot Dog]

I already have a "device" that converts microwave radiation into heat. It's called a frankfurter. Works great in my microwave oven.

[Sfut]

I just want to go through and punch the person who wanted to sound complicated by saying electromagnetic radiation so many times.
Still, this is VERY cool.

It might not be a real black hole, but you aren't either so shut up. lol

[DANIEL PRIESTLEY]

MY CONCLUSION ON THE SUBJECT OF THE INCREASE OF SOLOR PANEL USE IS AS FOLLWS DUE TO THE REVOLUTIONS OF ARE PLANET AND THE DIRECTION THE EARTH ROTATES PEOPLE CAN BE HARMED IN CERTAIN GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATIONS ,TIME STANDS STILL IN CERTAIN AREAS OF THE WORLD THOSE LOCATIONS ARE THE ONES IN AND ON THE LINE OF ROTATION CREATING PHYSICAL CHANGE TO THE HUMAN BODY THE FACTORS OF TIME ZONES PLAYS A CRUSIAL ROLE FOR EXAMPLE WHEN RUSSIA SLEEPS THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE IN MOTION WHEN THE SUN IS HIGHEST ON THE ROATION LINE TIME STANDS STILL THERFORE HUMANS ACTUALY LOOSE TIME FROM THIER LIFES

[bryan]

interesting article. I wish that some of the people that commented on it had more than a first graders education.

[aaron]

its not really a black hole at all

[Marty]

Monkeysplitz: Before you correct someone's grammar, learn how to spell "grammar".

[Lee Studley]

This more media BS hype. It mimics the
gradient and behavior of a black hole, but is in no way a gravitational black hole. So does my toilet in a limited dimensional way. Stupid sensationalism.
Nice for solar absorption of photons.
Would have been better called an narrow-band electromagnetic 'sink'
The media is ruining the world one misrepresentation at a time.

[Kyle H.]

this is the easiest way you can make a fortune online and at zero investment check out www.newmoneyforme.com

[education]

albert einstein.... thats all i have to say.... most of you sound stupid.... read get educated....

[Monkeysplitz]

I can't believe how ignorant people are after reading through the comments. No, the world will not end because of an electromagnetic capturing device that MIMICS a black hole. It's not the traditional black hole that people are used to hearing about. Also, EVERYONE should learn to spell and use proper grammer before they respond. Otherwise their respone is completely discredited by means of illiteracy. Seriously, where did you graduate so I never send my kids there?

[eric]

i might be being stupid right now, but i feel lost on one point. if it turns the microwave energy into heat, then wouldn't it do the same for sunlight? and if it DOES do the same for sunlight, wouldnt this kind of replace nuclear plants? anyway sounds like a cool device, i wish the guy very good luck! and religious people who think the world is gonna end because of this.... please.... go dig up a cave and hide if you're that scared, and quit nagging scientists -_-

[adam]

This sounds more like a funnel than a black hole... "We've created a black hole!" does sound more interesting than: "We created little funnels!".:D If it's better at not reflecting solar energy though, that's good.

[manxkat]

I took a big dump this morning.

[Darth Vader]

The ability to generate an artificial black hole is insignificant compared to the power of the Force.

(Heavy breathing in Sith Mask).
(Ignites red lightsaber).

[Richie]

sounds interesting hope this comes out a big success, problem is... if its release to the public ... i bet it would b expensive =x