First ever ‘black hole bomb’ created in the lab

Physicists have built the first ever black hole bomb, a long-theorised phenomenon where energy is boosted by a black hole and trapped by surrounding mirrors until an explosion occurs. Thankfully, this version is just a safe toy model rather than using a real black hole in space, but as the physical principles are identical, studying it could help researchers better understand how real black holes spin.

The idea of extracting energy from a black hole was first proposed in 1969 by physicist Roger Penrose. He…