
Scientists create metamaterial that can absorb light completely and turn it into heat - nickb
http://www.rdmag.com/ShowPR.aspx?PUBCODE=014&ACCT=1400000100&ISSUE=0805&RELTYPE=MS&PRODCODE=000000&PRODLETT=NF&CommonCount=0
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gills
This is cool. Anything that will help us convert light (particularly from the
sun) into a more directly usable form of energy should be a good thing.

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swombat
Funny, and there I was thinking most people were trying to figure out ways to
convert (waste) heat into something useful.

Heat's not that incredibly useful. Particularly when you consider that,
according to black body radiation laws, a body will emit exactly as much as it
absorbs.

So, this might be useful to get an object to reach room temperature really
quickly.

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hugh
Minor nitpick: it's not true that "a body will emit exactly as much as it
absorbs" in general. That's only true once it reaches some equilibrium
temperature, which may not be room temperature. If you stick a room-
temperature metal sheet outside on a sunny day, it will heat up until it
reaches a steady state where the rate of heat absorption is equal to the rate
of heat dissipation -- this can be significantly higher than room temperature,
which is why pieces of metal outside on a hot day are really really hot.

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hugh
Let me start by getting the "none more black" joke out of the way.

Anyway, this is kinda neat (though I'm skeptical that it's really 100%
absorption) but not really all that useful for anything, as far as I can tell.
There aren't many applications where the difference between absorbing 99.9% of
the light and 99.99999999999999999% of the light is a particularly big deal,
as far as I know.

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jws
It only absorbs over a narrow, tunable, frequency range. That won't make it
black. Personally I was disappointed when I saw they could take a picture of
it.

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hugh
Oh, I had assumed that was an electron micrograph. But you're right, now I
come to read the article again it only works over a narrow frequency range.

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davidw
Oh, oh, I know this one! I learned this as a kid with a magnifying glass.
"Ants"

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devicenull
Now if only we could completely turn heat into light. Wouldn't that make for a
interesting heatsink on a computer?

I forsee: Oh man, my computer is too bright

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manny
One step closer to creating a Dyson Sphere
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere>)!!

