Researchers at the Advanced Science Research Center at the City University of New York Graduate Center (CUNY-ASRC) have demonstrated something English mathematician and physicist Sir Roger Penrose predicted over 50 years ago. According to Penrose, it would be possible to extract energy from a rapidly spinning (Kerr) black hole by inserting an object into the region just beyond its event horizon (the ergosphere). This object would be accelerated and ejected from the region, carrying more energy than it did when it entered/

In 1971, Soviet physicist Yakov Zeldovich came along and built on this theorem (the Penrose Process), predicting that a wave interacting with a rapidly-spinning object could not only extract energy from it, but amplify it. In a paper recently published in Nature, the team (all members of CUNY-ASRC Photonics Initiative) demonstrated a new approach for amplifying waves through interaction with rotating bodies. Using a radio-frequency device modulated to mimic spinning, they created a synthetic form of ultrafast rotation far beyond what can be achieved mechanically.

Their device and the physical principles it utilizes could allow researchers to overcome limitations that have long hindered experimental studies of ultra-fast rotational dynamics. It consists of a ring-shaped network of electronic resonators whose properties were rapidly modulated in a timed sequence to produce a traveling pattern around the ring. While the device remained still, the traveling pattern of electromagnetic waves created a form of synthetic motion that mimics an object rotating at ultra-fast speed.