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Monday, June 07, 2010

China Creates Mini 'Black hole' Using Metamaterials

Metamaterials uses arrays of insulators and conductors to create resonant free-air structures that can bend incident waves around objects like an invisibility cloak or back on themselves like a black hole. Look for China to create Harry Potter calibre invisibility cloaks and mini black holes within five years. R.C.J.


Metamaterials absorbing incident microwaves, instead of diverting them around objects like an invisibility cloak, prompted Chinese researchers at Southeast University in Nanjing to claim they are created an "electromagnetic black hole." The concentric circles of metamaterials that act as an almost perfect "black body"—absorbing nearly all incident microwaves and converting it them to heat—hold the promise of enabling novel antennas, electromagnetic-wave harvesters and super-efficient thermal emitters, according to the researchers. Like invisibility cloaks that divert electromagnetic waves around objects, the Chinese omnidirectional absorbing device uses alternating fields of dielectrics and resonators—here I-shaped dielectric structures for its outer shell and Jerusalem-cross-shaped electric-field-coupled (ELC) resonators for its inner shell, respectively. About 60 concentric layers were constructed on a metamaterial disk measuring about 100 millimeters in diameter. As a result, all nearly all incident microwaves were absorbed and converted into heat...
Full Text: http://bit.ly/NextGenLog-canS