One of the many curious properties of Bose Einstein Condensates (BECs) is that the flow of sound through them is governed by the same equations that describe how light is bent by a gravitational field. That sets up the possibility of all kinds of fun and games--in theory, physicists can reproduce with sound and BECs, whatever wicked way gravity has with light.

Today, Ori Lahav and his mates at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa say they've created the sonic equivalent of a black hole in a BEC. That's some achievement given that physicists have wondered about this possibility for some 30 years and various groups with the ability to create BECs have been racing to create acoustic black holes.

The general idea is to set up a supersonic flow of atoms within the BEC. Sound waves moving against this flow can never make any ground. So the region where the flow changes from subsonic to supersonic is an event horizon. Any sound waves (or phonons) created inside the event horizon can never escape because the flow there is supersonic. That's the black hole.

I'm thinking congress is a good place for one of those. It will go well with the financial black hole they are building.

I need one of these for my daughter.