http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17980-black-hole-for-light-created-on-earth.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=physics-math

An electromagnetic "black hole" that sucks in surrounding light has been built for the first time.

The device, which works at microwave frequencies, may soon be extended to trap visible light, leading to an entirely new way of harvesting solar energy to generate electricity.

...

Cui is confident that they can do it. "I expect that our demonstration of the optical black hole will be available by the end of 2009," he says.

Neat.

Very interesting. Also of interest was the first comment regarding the possible application with solar sails. A lot of questions and lines of research are being opened by this, I am sure.

Very interesting stuff. Now to put it on an orbital platform and for sanctions we could darken there sunny days until they submit,

who needs nuclear weapons ? the heat it would produce at such scale might make "laser beams" the new green weapon of choice.

And without all that pesky fallout to worry about.

You might be on to something there, Nekko.

I know this is unrelated but this made me think of the collider at CERN. Has anyone heard much from them lately? Like did they ever fire it up?

Yeah, they did. The World Ended <tm>. Weren't you notified? :)

no :(
I'm the last to know everything.

Kind of like this :P

http://shatterhand007.com/Formula/FORMULALaserSatellite.jpg


Name that movie.

Diamonds Are Forever.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

I know this is unrelated but this made me think of the collider at CERN. Has anyone heard much from them lately? Like did they ever fire it up?

They think the Higgs Boson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson) is sabotaging it from the future!

(No really... some physicists do)

Of course then you get into all kinds of paradox(es, ii, wtf ever the plural form is) where as, how can a higgs boson come back and sabotage the CERN if a higgs boson can't take place because the future higgs boson stops it?

The specific conjecture isn't quite that bizarre, it's more than highly improbable quantum configurations are improbable for some reason, and whatever that reason is working against intentionally recreating them.

The plural of boson is bosons, although it's possible there's never been enough to qualify as plural :> My personal, non-academic opinion is that the damn thing doesn't exist and we're chasing the answer to the wrong question.

They did fire it up but there was a problem and its been taking them roughly this whole time to fix.