Black holes may serve as model for clinical laboratory IT solutions

The clinical laboratory IT solutions of the future could be built using black holes as inspiration.

Researchers at the University of Illinois College of Engineering say the structure of a black hole can serve as a model for the motion of electrons in a superconductor.

At present, the physics at work in superconductors during their insulating phase - when they are called Mott insulators - is not fully understood.

The theory is that repulsion between electrons is enough to prevent them from flowing through the material, but a complete solution has not yet been devised.

"One of the great unsolved problems in physics is the origin of superconductivity," says Philip Phillips, one of four authors on the study.

By using a curved spacetime model, similar to that believed to occur in the gravitational field of a black hole, some of the lesser understood aspects of superconductivity become more easily explained.

The research could help to devise clinical laboratory IT solutions for the future that make greater use of non-standard physical models in order to describe their operation more accurately.