I was supposed to be reviewing a Joint Venture Contract this evening, but after seeing the following headline, I am somehow wondering what’s the point, when armageddon may be close at hand (and as close as Nanjing):

Artificial Black Hole Created in Chinese Lab

Holy crap, Batman!

But wait, this is actually a real story:

[E]arlier this year, a group of physicists suggested that it ought to be possible to create a black hole using metamaterials. That’s an interesting idea but a demonstration would be more exciting.

Step forward Qiang Cheng and Tie Jun Cui at the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves at Southeast University in Nanjing, China, who have used metamaterials to create the world’s first artificial black hole in their lab. Yep, a real black hole. (Technology Review)

Cool, huh? OK, now calm down, this is not one of those high-gravity, nothing can escape it type of black hole. No, this is another flavor, the kind made using metamaterials that have a distortive effect on light, bending/steering it around objects. These guys in Nanjing are working on how to make stuff invisible.

I suppose I should get back to work, then. Nothing to worry about after all. I may avoid Nanjing for a while though, after I make sure that the city has not been sucked into a gravity well or has been hidden underneath a municipal-sized cloak of invisibility.