{"id":540663,"date":"2026-07-09T08:19:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T08:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/540663\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T08:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T08:19:10","slug":"black-hole-theory-synthetic-ultrafast-rotation-amplifies-electromagnetic-waves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/540663\/","title":{"rendered":"Black hole theory: Synthetic ultrafast rotation amplifies electromagnetic waves"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Artistic<\/a>Artistic rendering of Penrose super-radiance: electromagnetic waves with selected rotation patterns are amplified as they interact with a system that appears to rotate at superluminal speeds.<\/p>\n

Credit
\nDalila Pasotti and Hadiseh Nasari
\n Researchers at the Advanced Science Research Centre at the CUNY Graduate Centre (CUNY ASRC) have successfully recreated a famous black hole physics theory in a laboratory setting<\/p>\n

Published in the journal Nature, the study demonstrates that manipulating tailored materials over ultra-precise timelines<\/a> can simulate the physics of objects rotating faster than the speed of light, providing a new way to amplify electromagnetic waves.<\/p>\n

The successful experiment moves extreme rotational astrophysics out of the realm of pure math and into practical wave physics.<\/p>\n

The Penrose-Zel\u2019dovich legacy<\/p>\n

More than 50 years ago, physicist Sir Roger Penrose theorised that energy could be actively harvested from a black hole spinning at extreme speeds.<\/a> He proposed that if a particle entered the \u201cergosphere\u201d\u2014the region of space warped and dragged around by a rotating black hole\u2014it could split in two. While one half plunges into the event horizon, the escaping half would break free, carrying significantly more energy than the original particle possessed.<\/p>\n

Building upon this concept, physicist Yakov Zel\u2019dovich predicted that the same phenomenon would apply to waves. He hypothesised that if an electromagnetic wave interacted with a sufficiently fast-rotating physical object, the wave would extract energy from the rotation and become amplified.<\/p>\n

Until now, testing Zel\u2019dovich\u2019s theory was impossible because no physical matter can be mechanically spun fast enough to trigger the effect without ripping itself apart due to centrifugal forces.<\/p>\n

Engineering \u201csynthetic\u201d rotation<\/p>\n

To bypass the structural limits of mechanical spinning, the CUNY ASRC team engineered a stationary radio-frequency device that uses time-varying metamaterials to mimic ultrafast rotation.<\/p>\n

Instead of rotating physical matter, the researchers built a ring-shaped network of electronic resonators. They used a computer to rapidly modulate the electromagnetic properties of these resonators in a precisely timed, cascading sequence. This created a travelling wave pattern that raced around the ring.<\/p>\n

Even though the physical circuit board remained completely still, the rapidly shifting electronic pattern made incoming electromagnetic waves interact with the system as if it were a physical object spinning at \u201csuperluminal\u201d (faster-than-light) speeds.<\/p>\n

Broadband selective wave amplification<\/p>\n

When researchers sent radio waves into the device, they observed the Penrose-Zel\u2019dovich process in action. Waves injected with the correct, matching rotational attributes extracted raw energy directly from the synthetic time-engineered rotation. This resulted in broadband selective amplification, meaning the device could specifically target and boost designated wave signals.<\/p>\n

Using synthetic motion to simulate extreme, superluminal rotational regimes gives researchers a safe, highly controlled laboratory environment to study quantum and astrophysical phenomena that are otherwise unreachable.<\/p>\n

Future technological applications<\/p>\n

The ability to amplify waves by passing them through stationary, time-modulated metamaterials has major implications for practical engineering. Looking forward, the research team aims to scale these concepts from radio frequencies up to photonic and quantum scales.<\/p>\n

In the long term, this black-hole-inspired breakthrough could yield entirely new methods for manipulating light, boosting wireless communication signals, processing information in quantum optics, and designing next-generation photonic chips.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Artistic rendering of Penrose super-radiance: electromagnetic waves with selected rotation patterns are amplified as they interact with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61,60,248,82,1337],"class_list":["post-540663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-physics","tag-science","tag-space-exploration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}