Scientists from China have built a device that can trap and absorb microwaves coming from all directions with a 99% absorption rate - a property that makes the device simulate, to some extent, an astrophysical black hole.

A new computer model shows conclusively for the first time that a particle collision really can make a black hole, though the researchers are quick to point out that the experiment assumed energies a quintillion times higher than existing colliders (ex. the Large Hadron Collider).

Researchers are cautiously optimistic that experiments at the Large Hadron Collider could produce tiny black holes -- not large enough to threaten the earth -- but sufficient to test theories on how black holes could be used for energy production or even starships.

Researchers in China have successfully demonstrated a theory proposed earlier this year by creating an artificial black hole using metamaterials.

Researchers at the Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa, say that they've created the sonic equivalent of a black hole in a Bose-Einstein Condensate which should allow the eventual discovery of Hawking radiation.

As if forecasting whether asteroids will hit the Earth wasn't hard enough, it now seems that primordial black holes could surprise us by nudging a rock or two our way.

An artificial black hole has been simulated in a laboratory by scientists using lasers at St Andrews University.

Intense light pulses were used to create an artificial event horizon - the defining feature of a black hole known as the "point of no return".

An exotic theory, which attempts to unify the laws of physics by proposing the existence of an extra fourth spatial dimension, could be tested using a satellite to be launched in 2007. Such theories are notoriously difficult to test. But a new study suggests that such hidden dimensions could give rise to thousands of mini-black holes within our own solar system – and the theory could be tested within Pluto’s orbit in just a few years.

Nearly all of the information that falls into a black hole escapes back out, a controversial new study argues. The work suggests that black holes could one day be used as incredibly accurate quantum computers -- if enormous theoretical and practical hurdles can first be overcome.

Black holes are staples of science fiction and many think astronomers have observed them indirectly. But according to a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, these awesome breaches in space-time do not and indeed cannot exist.