Did you read the recent article about the black light?

You have probably heard about them before, perhaps in the context of a disco or the sun tan parlour. Black lights were given that name because they produced ultra violet light which of course we cannot see, but which when absorbed by other materials produces photosynthesis, suntan, strange glows, which were considered to add atmosphere, or ambience, to the venue, otherwise known as fluorescence, sunburn and cancers. But the article was not talking about that sort of black light, but something quite different. It was felt for a long time that the search for the black light was rather akin to the long running race to breed the first truly black tulip. Many very dark tulips have been bred of course, but rather like the familiar black lights used in discos they are actually simply a very dark shade of violet¹.

The actual engineering of a black light showed itself as a possibility with the advent of the wave particle duality coupled with its quantum mechanical aspects. In theory a black light light could be produced simply by reference to wave mechanics, and an appropriate use of laser technology. Interference is a well understood phenomena, even if it is generally unwelcome when used in actual communications (aka TV signals), and the existence of nodes, essentially a point in space in which the wave dynamic amplitude is reduced to nil. In sonic applications, in particular sound damping applications in industry, interference is often used to silence what would otherwise be an intolerable sound. This works well where the sounds are regular and predictable. Often however the complexity of the wave formations in the real world, and we are thinking now of the electromagnetic waves which we experience as light, make the use only of wave mechanics an impossible mountain to climb, and even if it were possible to climb it the computing power required to control the laser output is simply beyond anything that we have yet been able to build. Quantum computing may overcome this of course, but that is still in its infancy.

The alternative approach which relies upon the quantum effects of the wave particle duality however help us to overcome the computing difficulty. What we are doing, in layman’s terms, is moving the computing power required out of the machines that we build and into the real world and utilising its own quantum effects. This is analogous to the industrial sound damping problem where a digital solution fails, but an analogue solution prevails. You will all be aware of the difficulties of quantum mechanics in the real world; this is the Schrödinger’s cat problem. The Schrödinger’s cat problem however relates to a single quantum event. In the real world we are dealing with billiards of events and across these we can predict with certainty the outcome of the events taken as a whole. This has been understood clearly throughout most of the twentieth century, but the problem then became how can this understanding be applied to the black light problem? The breakthrough came in the early years of the twenty first century. One year before beforehand the year 2000 problem hit many of our computers. Of course adequate preparations had been, by all who knew that moving from dates with years commencing 19 to years commencing 20 would be an issue, made and most of the popular operating systems had addressed the matter many years earlier. A few machines were however ill-prepared for the change.

The specific issues that these machines faced is not the subject of the article, of course. They were not machines that had any public impact, but were used in many academic laboratories. The anomalous results produced in that final year of the twentieth century led to an investigation into the nullification (actual nihilifaction, but that is quite a difficult technical term to describe in this bus passengers’ summary of the scientific article. I also read of kenotic interactions in the main article, a term which inspired more dread even than the first) of photons in free space, and it was discovered that this was a process that had taken place quite naturally and we had not even noticed. Quantum interactions took place in parallel with the interference observed in wave mechanics to produce nodes in the space-time continuum which were free of, in simple terms, light. In other words those nodes were in complete darkness.

This discovery led the academic teams to consider three general areas:

• whether the size of these nodes could be controlled
• whether it was possible to generate these nodes – in whatever way
• whether it was possible to stabilise the nodes in the fourth (time) dimension

This is a huge simplification of course, and others may take exception to the way I have presented the issues in these three areas. It will do for me today, if you can think of a better simplification, and I have no doubt that text books will soon be published which provide a different but nevertheless isodocic, or at least not incongruent, with mine, presentation; please, let me know.

The first step was to demonstrate the possibility of supporting negative energy fields. Other so-called forbidden energy states, and in particular transitions to and from them, are well understood, in the matter for example of phosphorescence. The ideas underlying this concept had been present in quantum theory since at least the days of Paul Dirac’s quantum sea proposal: 
Don’t worry that is the only equation you will see in this article. It is perfectly well explained in other publications, but in any event it has been superseded by a better understanding of these things. The results of the new work were presented at the Icarus Project. At that stage the end game of the studies was kept well under wraps.

Further work however was required to answer the questions that had been posed. Progress was slow, but the theory answered yes to each of these matters. Having shown in theory that it may be possible to control the nodes, various aspects of the theory were put to the test, primarily through post graduate doctoral theses, as these were relatively cheap, and being quite narrow in their scope would not give away the big idea too soon. Each thesis had to design, run and prove experiments to test some aspect of the theory. After several years the original team had dispersed across several universities, but continued to work together on this project utilising the time of whatever PhD student was willing to work on it. As the individual parts of the theory were proven, where they could, testing began on multiple aspects. All of the abstracts to these doctoral theses are available online in the usual places, if you have access to the appropriate libraries. For the full script you must approach the authors or visit the university libraries.

Provide link

Eventually it was possible to involve the engineers, who were to build prototype engines which were intended to control the size, shape, intensity and stability of the nodes. One engineer of German descent hit upon a relatively simple model engine, which his colleagues wished to name Awesome, but he insisted in honour of his much loved Oma that it be named Aweful which was a play on her name and his family name, though it required significant power input. At a power input of 40kw it was able to produce a stable intensity of -300lumens/s/cu.m in a volume of 2.5l for a period just under 10ms. The earlier attempts were able to produce nodes for durations measured only in nanometres and µs.

This was a great achievement, in scientific and academic terms, but a wholly impracticable solution for the real world. Further developments were made. Input to output ratios were lowered by a factor of ten thousand, but stability proved to be a greater problem. Advances in other forms of lighting engineering however were adopted which produced significant improvements. The original machine design was retained, but the components were upgraded to use the newer materials which had become available. There was then an unexpected shift in both the I/O ratio and the stability of the luminous intensity. For the academics, this required further work on the theory, as they were reluctant to proceed without a proper understanding of what had changed. The engineers however were delighted with the result and pressed ahead building into their designs and machines control mechanisms to prevent overloading of the output. At the same time they looked at the possibility of controlling the output through processes similar to the optical amplification and stimulation techniques which were used for lasers. In their view this would provide a much safer source than the original idea of a random source.

The engineers raced ahead with the material they had, though not understanding why things were working until the academic team had caught up with them and were able to confirm an understanding of the results that had been seen in the real world.

They were then ready to go public on the matter. By now the engineers had been able to produce a machine that was little larger than a lectern and would run, though admittedly not for very long, on batteries. They packed the batteries into the lectern stand, controls on the face of the reading desks and the source into a rather bulbous expansion box at the top of the reading desk. The academics sought the lecturer who had given the negative enegry field presentation at the Icarus Project and arranged for the first public presentation to take place from a viewing platform high above the city.

The quality of the picture is not good, but the engineering did not fail. The source was able to produce a black out flux at approximately -10000 lumens/s/cu. m for thirty seconds. This black out flux was able to control the whole of the pyramidical space delineated in the image, a volume of roughly 1 cu. m. You will note from the shadows that the source was pointing directly at the sun, thus demonstrating the efficacy of the flux. An appendix to the paper provides technical details explaining the marginal effects of tinting in the windows.

The academic team are now looking for industrial partners to develop the Aweful engine further. There are many commercial, industrial and military uses for Aweful, providing it can be scaled up.

It is seen as an effective and non-lethal weapon. A sufficiently powerful source would be able to provide a black out flux across a wide area, such as a battlefield, ensuring that no fighting could take place. Infrared and night vision goggles would be rendered ineffective. Radio and wireless communication of all sorts would also be impossible as the flux operates on all electromagnetic waves through their quantum interactions. With further work it is thought that frequency specific holes could be left in the black out to allow defenders to communicate. Laser technology would allow the source to be placed high in the sky, perhaps even ultimately on a satellite, and the black out applied with precision and considerable accuracy. Presently the technical challenges of providing a sufficiently powerful energy supply would militate against the use of a satellite.

It is also seen as a security device. A black out device could be used in any place which requires high security, even in homes, to protect against intruders. But perhaps the most likely use will be in the field of entertainment. There are many places which would benefit from such a device. A lower powered device, which would be able say to continuously provide -5000 l/s/cu. m, would be sufficient to provide a sufficiently dark ‘room’ even in the open air as it operates by bathing the area in negative luminous energy, the flux. In a completely blacked out zone, any light from sources in, or shining into, the zone is nihilifactored (neutralised to you and me) by the kenotic quantum interactions with the flux from the source, but if the black out is not complete then it is rather like being in a room with very low level lighting. This would provide some very interesting possibilities if the frequency specific holes problem can be solved.

Thus there are many exciting commercial prospects and already the engineers have prepared to lodge a planning application to the Sydney City council for the provision of a day time open air discothèque on Bondi beach, concluding that the black out lighting would have not only value as an entertainment venue, but also have collateral health benefits, in that day time exercise could be obtained in the open air without the issues of overdoses of UV. It would also reduce the number of shark attacks as the day time occupants of the beach would be likely more attracted to the disco than to the sea.

Shark attack

In the assured prospect that the appropriate planning consents will be provided, the dear lady after whom the Aweful flux engine has been named, Frau Awril Fuhldü, has agreed to be present for the opening of the venue, and she has said, to be the first to dance the floor.

^{1 The claim may be disputed by some. The date of that article, unlike this, is undisclosed.
2 Apologies to anyone whose copyrights Coco may have inadvertently infringed.}