Space Disco : Discovery Space

The Space Disco Has Closed! But the Party Isn't Over, It's Been Relocated to a Bigger Dancefloor

Ian O'Neill — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:53:12 -0500

Just in case you didn't know (perhaps you live in a cave with no wi-fi coverage), Discovery News has been re-branded, re-designed and re-launched. It's been re-everythinged!

The only thing you will see that is familiar is the awesome reported news articles, outstanding slide shows, incredible video and awesome-outstanding-incredible blogging. Pretty much everything we've been world-leaders in for the past 11 years stays the same, everything else has been re-vamped.

My bet is that you'll love it. If you don't, you can tell us as we now have commenting on every piece of content we produce. That's got to be worth sticking Discovery News Space in your RSS feed, iPhone and bookmarks, right?

I hereby declare Space Disco closed, but the party isn't over, it's just been relocated to a bigger warehouse.

All of my blogs will live on Discovery News from here on in, see you there!

What Will John Cusack be Doing on Dec. 21, 2012? Skiing.

Ian O'Neill — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:52:33 -0500

Wow, today has been an eventful day!

This afternoon I had a great interview with Dr. Mike Brown (a.k.a. the planet hunter who killed Pluto by discovering Eris) all about hate-mail, Pluto, Planet X and Nibiru. The full interview transcript will be online sometime during Wednesday, so be sure to check back soon.

Before I could catch a breath, I had to run to Downtown Los Angeles for the red carpet event of the premier for the new disaster movie 2012. I was especially chuffed that I was able to fire a few questions at actor John Cusack and director Roland Emmerich. Discovery News was given a good spot to ambush the actors and crew just before they walked through the doors of the Regal Cinema to watch the worldwide premier (unfortunately, I couldn't get into that party).

Through a massive stroke of luck, I had my wife Deb with me (a.k.a. ace celebrity-spotter assistant) and we met up with our friend Edward Stencel (a.k.a. ace cameraman and director) who offered to capture the whole adventure in glorious HD. So I'll save the details until the Discovery News video is edited and put online.

During the red carpet (or, more accurately, "black carpet" with the comedy text "2012 We Were Warned" printed in bold), I asked the usual questions to the cast, and probably the most refreshing response to my question "are you scared about what might happen in 2012?" came from young actress Morgan Lily (pictured right) who said that doomsday didn't worry her, but ghosts were of a greater concern.

In fact, most of the cast were very chilled-out about the whole doomsday thing, overwhelmingly indicating that it was "just a movie." Fortunately, the hysteria associated with the questionable marketing campaign for 2012 was absent from tonight's proceeds.

Personally, my favorite part of the entire night was talking with the experts who advised the crew about Mayan culture and the science behind blowing stuff up. At one point, it became more of a discussion about the accuracies (and inaccuracies) of our understanding of the Maya rather than an interview. Also, a plasma physics expert was on-hand to discuss some doomsday physics, so we had a great time discussing the shortfalls in solar physics funding and some of the real risks associated with being hit my a solar flare from the sun (much to the frustration of another news team standing downstream from me).

Everything was a blur, a lot happened, fast. For all the details, you'll have to see the video (coming soon), but it will be worth the wait as I get some juicy details from director Roland Emmerich and some personal thoughts from producer Mark Gordon. Unfortunately I totally missed out on meeting Amanda Peet, Thandie Newton and Danny Glover... next time...

But Discovery News DID get the scoop about what John Cusack will be doing on the real December 21, 2012. When I managed to shout that question over the clamouring news crews and microphones, he responded with, "I'll be skiing." And why not.

Kepler's Exoplanet Hunt On Hold Until 2011 [UPDATED]

Ian O'Neill — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:04:35 -0400

UPDATE (Nov. 1): Originally, this article sounded pretty grim for Kepler, but it would appear that my source (Nature) may not be correct. A message was posted today by William Borucki, the principal investigator of the exoplanet-hunter mission, flagging the inaccuracy:

"There is a mistake in the Nature article. The Kepler Mission is actually doing very well and is producing planet discoveries that will be announced early next year. Data from 3 of the 84 channels that have more noise than the others will be corrected or the data flagged to avoid being mixed in with the low noise data prior to the time an Earth twin could be discovered." --William Borucki, Kepler Science Principal Investigator

I will make attempts to clarify this issue and will post updates as I get them. The original post continues below (posted on Oct. 30).

Just when the extra-solar planet hunt seemed to be going so well, NASA has announced that the orbital Earth-like exoplanet hunter will not be able to detect a world like our own until 2011 at the earliest.

The Kepler space telescope was launched in March and the hope is that in the small patch of sky (containing 100,000 stars) it is focussing in on, Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting within the "habitable zones" of their parent stars will be discovered. However, there's a problem: Kepler has noisy amplifiers.

Keep in mind that the sensitive equipment on board Kepler has been designed to detect the slightest change in brightness of a star as an exoplanet passes in front, thereby slightly dimming the starlight that is falling on Kepler's charge-coupled devices (CCDs). If you're looking at a star many light years away, you can expect this dip in brightness to be infinitesimally small.

The amplifiers in the space telescope's electronics are used to boost the signal from the CCDs. If there is any electronic noise between the light being received and the data being sent to Earth, the signal of transiting exoplanets may be lost in the fuzz. Unfortunately, three of these amplifiers are producing unacceptable levels of noise, prompting the Kepler team to evaluate their options.

The other amplifiers appear to be functioning well, but the noisy amplifiers really upset the balance. Ideally, if the instrument was on the ground, scientists could replace the amplifiers. But Kepler is in an Earth-trailing orbit (it orbits the sun at 1AU, following behind our planet), so there's no chance of an in-situ repair job.

To counteract this noise, scientists are working on a software solution. Although only a small portion of observations will be affected by the amplifier glitch, it would be too hard to remove the bad datasets when they are sent to mission control. Instead, the Kepler team must put the mission on hold until they devise a software solution that can automatically remove the noise soon after the data is received by the CCDs. The kicker is that the software isn't likely to be prepared until 2011.

Ouch.

So what can we do in the mean time? Actually, this Kepler glitch has presented an opportunity (and perhaps even an incentive) for other exoplanet hunting teams down here on the ground. Although Kepler can gain information about an exoplanet's size (the bigger the exoplanet, the more light it will block out), ground based observatories look out for a star's "wobble" to derive an exoplanet's mass (as the exoplanet orbits, it pulls the star slightly, producing a detectable shift in position). Looking out for an exoplent wobbling its parent star is known as the radial velocity measurement technique.

Astronomer Greg Laughlin from the University of California at Santa Cruz agrees that the delay for Kepler makes it "more likely that the first Earth-mass planet is going to go to the radial-velocity observers".

Although the Kepler news is frustrating, it doesn't mean the Earth-like exoplanet hunt is over, not by a long shot.

Source: Nature, thanks to @Exoplanetology for the tip-off!

5 Frightening (But True) Space Stories

Ian O'Neill — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:37:07 -0400

Guest blog post by HowStuffWorks.com science writer and Discovery Space contributor Robert Lamb.

There's nothing like a good horror story in space*. I grew up watching Sigourney Weaver outsmart xenomorphs in her underwear and subsequently spent a little too much time reading the likes of Stephen King's "I am the Doorway," H.P. Lovecraft's "In the Walls of Eryx" and John Steakley's "Armor."

As a result, it's hard for me to read about space exploration without thinking of about its darker possibilities -- and I don't just mean aliens and distant Hell worlds. Leaving Earth's atmosphere is a dangerous endeavor and, major tragedies aside, there have been a number of smaller terrifying, grotesque and absurd episodes to come out of it. So if you'll allow me to serve as your cosmic Crypt Keeper for a few minutes, I thought I'd run though a few of the ones that get under my skin.

Space Corpses in the Sky: Space exploration research has claimed a number of animal lives, and while the idea of sacrificing monkeys and dogs on the altar of science is rather disheartening, the notion that there are dead simian and canine space explorers in orbit RIGHT NOW just adds to the creepiness.

Several early space missions involved re-entry procedures, but not every spacecraft was recovered. This leads many to theorize that perhaps dozens of mummified animals are still making the orbital rounds up there. Think about that the next time you wish upon a star.

Wolf Food from Heaven: All right, so that last bit of space horror was more disgusting than terrifying. It wasn't near as bad as, say, being eaten alive by wolves. Yet that's a fate that cosmonaut Alexei Leonov barely avoided in 1965. He performed the first space walk on his mission, but experienced both air leaks and material unexpected stiffening -- the latter of which made cramming himself back in the capsule a very near thing. He actually had to lower suit pressure and risk the bends scrambling back inside! Finally, Voskhod 2 went off course during re-entry and landed in the Ural mountains where Leonov and his commander were forced to wait for rescue amid the howls of hungry wolves. Air & Space Magazine has even more about the mission here.

Apollo Toilet Horrors: On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard wet his pants aboard Freedom 7, but Apollo bathroom facilities would get a lot worse before they got any better. I don't think I'm the only guy to find something fundamentally frightening about a urinal that consists only of a "condom-like fitting," a valve and the empty void of outer space. I keep thinking about that scene from "Goldfinger."

And if that wasn't bad enough, space writer Andrew Chaikin's description of going No. 2 in orbit is even worse. In "A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts," he writes about a special plastic bag that resembles "a top hat with an adhesive coating on the brim." I think you can guess how this works. Then, the whole spectacle gets even worse when you have to knead germicide into the contents. According to Chaikin, one Apollo 7 astronaut shared this bit of advice on the whole ghastly endeavor: "Get naked, allow an hour, have plenty of tissues handy."

Decompression Blues: Decompression is nasty business. If you've ever watched "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Firefly," "Outland" or either of two James Bond films, then you have at least a fiction-obscured understanding of this. All three crewmembers of Soyuz 11 died when depressurized during re-entry, but in 1965, a technician at Johnson Space Center in Houston lived to tell about the experience. While inside a vacuum chamber, the tech accidentally depressurized his space suit. His last memory before losing consciousness? The sensation of the moisture on his tongue beginning to boil, according to Scientific American. The experts don't all agree on the full symptoms of rapid decompression, but among the possibilities are swollen flesh, vaporizing blood, exploding eyeballs and ruptured lungs.

Space Beast (with Two Backs): Microgravity sex is a topic of immense interest to teenage fanboys and scientists alike. Yet while the former are into it more for the prospect of kinky encounters of the fourth kind, the latter recognize it as a necessary fact of not only prolonged space missions, but the future of the human species itself. If we're ever going to leave the nest, so to speak, we're going to have to learn our way around extraterrestrial sex.

Both the United States and the former Soviet Union explored this topic from a space medicine standpoint, but (unless you believe the conspiracy theories) it took a former "Beastmaster" actress to take on Newton's laws of motion and actually design special garments for the act. Vanna Bonta's 2suit, according to Wired, is basically a pair of twin jumpsuits that open in the front (kind of like the creepy wing monsters in "Beastmaster") and fasten to each other with Velcro strips and zippers. Then you can fasten the whole two-person sex pod to a stable object -- like Captain Pike or a Guild Navigator. So is space sex still appealing, sci-fi fans? Or does it just seem awkward and creepy?

So there you have it: a quick glance at space exploration's dark corners, where monkey tombs orbit the Earth, blood vaporizes, urine freezes and sacks full of coupling cosmonauts bump rhythmically against the airlock hatch. Take some of that nightmare fuel with you this Halloween weekend.

*For that matter, there's nothing like a bad one. Hence my unfortunate affinity for "Event Horizon." Yes, I even somehow enjoyed "Jason X."

Explore a galaxy of terror at HowStuffWorks.com:
How the Apollo Spacecraft Worked
Spaced Out: Sex in Space (video)
Why are there dozens of dead animals floating in space?
What if an astronaut went on a space walk without wearing a space suit?

Image: Space travelers in 2009's "Pandorum" presumably contemplate something terrifying. Is it one of the Apollo toilet bags? (Photo courtesy Overture Films)

It's Alive! The LHC is Injected with its First Particle Beam

Ian O'Neill — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:43:29 -0400

Like the reanimation of a super-cool corpse, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was injected with beams of particles over the weekend and the multi-billion euro project came to life. These are the first protons and lead ions the collider has seen since its famous "quench" shortly after its début power-up on Sept. 10, 2008.

The catastrophic quench nine days later was caused by an electrical short between two of the superconducting magnets between sectors 3 and 4 (the quench is therefore known as the "S34 Incident") of the 17 mile-long ring, triggering the loss of over a ton of liquid helium, ripping the heavy electromagnets from the floor.

Now the damage has been repaired and the magnets have been cooled back down to 1.9 Kelvin (-456F) -- cooler than deep space -- the system is ready to circulate its first particles since 2008. However, before the LHC can circulate ions and protons fully around its ring, particles must be injected and transported around smaller sections of the LHC first. CERN is basically "testing the water" to verify all the complex electronics are correctly calibrated and synchronized.

Starting on Oct. 23, physicists and engineers carried out a "test run", injecting particles into small sections of the accelerator and everything seems to be working perfectly. On Friday, protons and lead ions traveled clockwise through the LHC ring and were passed through the "A Large Ion Collider Experiment" (ALICE) detector before being dumped. Then on Saturday, protons traveled counterclockwise through the LHCb detector. These short test-runs appear to be boosting confidence that the LHC is on the right track to a full particle circulation test in November.

"This is a work of synchronisation," said Gianluigi Arduini, deputy head of hardware commissioning for the LHC. "The fast magnets must be synchronised to accelerate the beam and transfer it from one accelerator to the next and eventually to the LHC, which must be synchronised to accept it."

"This whole process happens within a few hundred picoseconds - one picosecond is a millionth of a millionth of a second."

Now that the injection appears to be a total success, LHC operators can plan for the next phase of testing before energies are ramped up. The protons and ions were injected at an energy of 450 million electron volts (eV) over the weekend. This might sound like a lot, but it's only a fraction of when the LHC is designed to achieve. It is hoped that by 2011, we will be seeing relativistic beams -- i.e. particles traveling at close to the speed of light -- accelerated to energies in excess of seven billion eV.

Soon, counter-rotating beams of particles will be accelerated and then channeled by precise guiding magnets to make their paths cross inside the huge detectors. On collision, the resulting release of energy will help CERN physicists probe the fine detail of matter, getting a glimpse of the state of matter only moments after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.

Image: The cross section of the ion beam entering point 2 of the LHC, just before the ALICE detector on Oct. 23, 2009 (CERN)

Sources: CERN, BBC, Symmetry Breaking

Amelia Earhart's Scarf to be Flown to the Space Station

Ian O'Neill — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:13:44 -0400

This weekend, the story of legendary explorer Amelia Earhart will be told in an epic movie called "Amelia". Earhart will be played by Hilary Swank (who bares more than just a fleeting resemblance to the aviation pioneer, great casting) and the film will recount her exploits up until the point when her plane disappeared over the Pacific Ocean during an attempt to be the first woman to fly around the world in 1937.

What happened to Amelia Earhart on her final flight? Discovery News: Earhart's Final Resting Place Believed Found

Earhart, who became famous as the first female to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1933, hired an official photographer named Albert Bresnik in 1932 and now his grandson is about to honor the great female aviator by carrying one of her scarves to the International Space Station (ISS).

"We are flying Amelia Earhart's favorite scarf that she unfortunately did not take with her on her final mission," said Randy Bresnik, mission specialist on the STS-129 Atlantis launch to the ISS, when he spoke with collectSPACE during a recent interview. "Fortunately, she also decided not to take her photographer with her otherwise I might not be here today."

In 1929, Earhart founded an international female aviator's organization called the Ninety-Nines, and the scarf has been borrowed from the organization's Museum of Women Pilots in Oklahoma City.

Although one of Earhart's scarves has visited space before (by Eileen Collins, the first US woman to command and pilot the space shuttle in 1995), this will be a very special connection to the pioneer through her close friend's grandson.

"The other thing [Randy Bresnik] told us is that he has the coordinates for Howland Island," said Carolyn Smith, chairman of the Ninety-Nines' Board of Trustees for the museum, referring to the the island that Earhart was trying to find before she mysteriously went missing. "He is going to try to take a picture of [the island] as they overfly it in the space shuttle."

"He said, 'If nothing else, some part of Amelia will have finished her around the world trip.' I thought that kind of neat," said Smith.

Source: Interview by collectSPACE.com. Special thanks to Rossella Lorenzi for the tip!

Coming to a Twitter Client Near You: #Moonwatch

Ian O'Neill — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:24:54 -0400

Building on the huge success of #Meteorwatch, the UK's Newbury Astronomical Society is currently preparing for the second instalment of #Moonwatch!

You might be wondering, what's this #Moonwatch? What's it got to do with Twitter? What's this "#" business?

Well, #Meteorwatch occurred during the Perseid meteor shower in mid-August, and the international response to this social media astronomical event was unprecedented. Even the mainstream media picked up on its popularity, culminating in BBC news articles and (of course) Discovery Space interviews.

Basically, members of the Newbury AS got together and worked out that Twitter could be the perfect means to communicate a global event. In 140 characters or less, amateur astronomers, professional astronomers and the general public who wouldn't otherwise have known there was a meteor shower going on over their heads, could all share their observations, ask questions and learn about this dazzling event.

Headed by Adrian West (@AdrianWest), the @NewburyAS Twitter account became the hub, collecting information and, most importantly, connecting people. Every tweet that was tweeted on the subject had the #Meteorwatch 'hashtag' added inside the text so all the tweets during the meteor shower could be searched.

@Astroengine and @Discovery_Space participated, even though I was in New York at the time and I had no way of seeing the meteors due to cloud, I could see the #Meteorwatch tweets come in often with images of the 'shooting stars' moments after they were spotted. What a marvellous alternative.

So now we have #Moonwatch and it is scheduled to begin on Oct. 26 and end on Oct. 28, however, according to Elias Jordan (@kastro), the #Moonwatch tweets will commence this weekend. Also, it's not just all going to be about the Moon; "Jupiter and other celestial objects" will make an appearance, too.

To get started follow the guys listed in this awesome promo video (by Adrian West) and go enjoy some astronomy with an international collaboration of countless other Twitter users!

Basic Chemistry for Life Detected on Exoplanet HD 209458b

Ian O'Neill — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:10:30 -0400

These are very exciting times for extrasolar planet hunters. Dozens of new exoplanets have been discovered (some a little larger than Earth, others several times the size of Jupiter) and astronomers are refining their already sophisticated techniques to analyze the composition of the atmospheres of these distant worlds.

Take exoplanet HD 209458b for example. It might not have the most romantic of names (the designation "HD 209458" is the catalogue number of the Sun-like star it's orbiting), but this exoplanet is famous in its own right. In 1999, it was the first ever transiting exoplanet to be discovered. A transiting exoplanet is a world that passes in front of its parent star when viewed from Earth, blocking a little of the starlight for astronomers to detect and measure.

By using the parent star's light to their advantage, NASA scientists have been able to decipher what chemicals HD 209458b's atmosphere contains even though it is 150 light years from Earth. This exoplanet is a very large gas giant which has a very tight orbit around the star (it is therefore dubbed a "Hot Jupiter"), so life isn't expected to be a possibility, but HD 209458b contains the basic organic chemicals as used, and produced, by life as we know it.

"It's the second planet outside our solar system in which water, methane and carbon dioxide have been found, which are potentially important for biological processes in habitable planets," said Mark Swain of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Detecting organic compounds in two exoplanets now raises the possibility that it will become commonplace to find planets with molecules that may be tied to life."

Spectroscopic observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope have been analysed and Swain has been able to deduce the wavelengths of light that has been absorbed by HD 209458b's atmosphere. These "absorption lines" provide the fingerprints of certain chemicals and it would appear that water, methane and carbon dioxide are all present.

When compared with the first exoplanetary observations of organic chemicals (exoplanet HD 189733b), the quantities of water and carbon dioxide appear to be the same, however, HD 209458b contains more methane. Perhaps this is indicative of some planetary formation process that might be particular to this world. "It could mean there was something special about the formation of this planet," Swain speculated.

Just because organic compounds are being found on distant worlds does not mean life may or may not be present, it simply means that there are a lot more life-giving chemicals around than we previously thought.

"...the detection of organic compounds will not necessarily mean there's life on a planet, because there are other ways to generate such molecules," Swain said. "If we detect organic chemicals on a rocky, Earth-like planet, we will want to understand enough about the planet to rule out non-life processes that could have led to those chemicals being there."

Image: Artist's impression of HD 209458b orbiting its star (NASA)

Source: Physorg.com

The Search For Extraterrestrial Polluters

Ian O'Neill — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:16:28 -0400

So how do you go about spotting an alien civilization? Well, you build a really big radio telescope and point it at the stars. But say ET isn't transmitting? Or say ET is transmitting, but they are too far away? What if our alien neighbors decided not to transmit radio waves? What if they're just shy and don't want the cosmos to know where they live?

The biggest limitation when trying to listen into any kind of signal is the speed of light. After all, mankind has only been transmitting radio waves for about 100 years. This means that any signal we've accidentally leaked into space has only traveled 100 light-years. In galactic scales, this is very pedestrian; the Milky Way is 100,000 light-years in diameter and 1,000 light-years thick. Only a small handful of stars have had the pleasure of listening in to our noise.

There are a few other ways we can go about searching for intelligent extraterrestrials (such as looking for observational evidence of alien mega-structures), but so far we have had little indication that intelligent life lives anywhere else apart from Earth. The universe is a huge place, it would be naive to say that we are the only intelligent form of life there is. But the fact remains: it's getting lonely out here.

Light on Earth

So, we search, and we try to think up other novel ways we can spot ET from 10s to 100s to 1,000s of ligh-years distant. And a team of astronomers led by Jean Schneider of the Paris Observatory at Meudon, France, is currently pondering this challenge.

In paper to appear in the journal Astrobiology, the team decided to investigate whether an alien civilization could give themselves away by the amount of light pollution they produce. Take a look at the orbital images of Earth and you'll see that this isn't a difficult thing to understand. On the night-side of Earth the lights of our cities are easily visible; perhaps aliens have cities which, like ours, generate some kind of light pollution?

The problem with this is that when compared with the brightness of the star the alien world is orbiting, city lights will be very hard to distinguish. Schneider et al. estimate that we'd need to build an array of telescopes with the collective area of 1.5 square kilometers. Even then we'd only be able to search for light pollution on exoplanets within 15 light-years from Earth.

No, when searching for alien civilizations further afield we'd need to look out for some other indication of a civilization. What kind of pollution doesn't occur naturally, indicating a civilization is thriving?

Chlorofluoro-goodness

The detection of chlorofluorocarbons (or CFCs) in an exoplanet's atmosphere would be a very good indicator of the presence of alien technology. CFCs do not occur naturally and they are strong absorbers of infrared light. Although a very powerful telescope and spectrometer would be required, the existence of CFCs could be detected by analyzing the parent star's starlight through the exoplanet's atmosphere.

Although this is a very novel way of looking for ET, we'd be making a huge assumption that the alien civilization has made the same mistakes as mankind in producing CFCs in the first place. After all, CFCs make holes in our ozone layer, this makes CFCs bad, right?

Although CFCs are now banned on Earth (and they will eventually be removed from our atmosphere all together), say alien civilizations don't need an ozone layer? (This is a tricky argument to present as ozone absorbs harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun, thereby allowing life to evolve. But this is terrestrial life, perhaps "life as we don't know it" evolved differently to us.) Assuming CFCs are bad universally -- simply because they eat our protective ozone layer -- is another assumption that may not apply to an alien species.

Whether or not we ever detect the presence of an alien civilization, we are certainly giving the search our best shot. Personally, I wonder if we'll be lonely for much longer...

Source: New Scientist

First Ever Black Hole Created on Earth

Ian O'Neill — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:40:42 -0400

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.