❝ Art can sometimes play tricks on the mind thanks to optical illusions, although rarely does this kind of art put anyone in real danger…But one art installation did, as a man visiting the Fundação de Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, Portugal on Aug. 13 accidentally fell into the work of famed artist Anish Kapoor titled Descent Into Limbo — which features a hole in the ground made to look like a mere spot on the floor.
❝ The visitor — reportedly an Italian man in his 60s — allegedly wanted to see if the void was indeed just that and subsequently fell about eight feet to the bottom of the installation. To the illusion’s credit, there were multiple caution signs set up around the piece as well as a guard tasked with keeping visitors away from the hole…
❝ Kapoor won the exclusive rights to the world’s darkest material in 2016, as according to the company, Vantablack “requires specialist application to achieve its aesthetic effect… the coating’s performance beyond the visible spectrum results in it being classified as a dual-use material that is subject to UK Export Control…”
By using Vantablack for Descent Into Limbo, Kapoor was able to completely eliminate any visible depth in the piece. No curves nor contours are visible — all the eye sees is nothingness.
Draw whatever conclusions you may – political or otherwise – about the usefulness of this substance. Way cool!
Why graphene hasn’t taken over the world…yet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IesIsKMjB4Y
Also: “Electrons that behave like light are Dirac electrons. Dirac electrons have been in monolayer graphene and now they are seen in twelve-sided graphene quasicrystal. They have useful and unique electronic properties which are useful for probing new physics and they might be useful for spintronics and quantum computers. Those might be far faster forms of computing.
Electrons in monolayer graphene are described by massless Dirac electrons, which exhibit unique quantum phenomena due to the pseudospin and Berry phase of the massless electron.
A tunable bandgap up to 200 meV can be induced in bilayer graphene with electrical gating.” https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/08/electrons-that-behaves-like-light-in-twelve-sided-graphene-quasicrystal.html
Close encounters with medium-size black holes can reanimate dead stars, if only momentarily, a new study suggests. https://www.space.com/41663-black-holes-reanimate-dead-stars.html