Pittsburgh Glass Center moves toward merger with local arts organization

In a joint release with the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, the Pittsburgh Glass Center has announced the launch of “merger negotiations” with a fellow Iron City nonprofit arts organization. In a process expected to take up to a year-and-a-half, the PGC and PCA boards of directors are investigating how they might form a single comprehensive arts organization that supports a wider range of artistic media and approaches. This will be the second merger for the PCA, which in January 2006, completed a merger with Pittsburgh Filmmakers. The process should be made easier by the fact that the PCA and PGA already share their executive director, a position which is held by Charlie Humphrey.

Glass Curiosities: Glass and lasers used to successfully test theories of black hole radiation

Inspired by science, the Black Hole Paperweight is made by Glass Eye Studio in Seattle. Click on image for more information.

Working in an Italian lab, a group of physicists have created what they are calling a “desktop black hole,” by shooting intense pulses of laser through a piece of glass so quickly, it interferes with the transmission of the light through the glass. Some of the light particles are trapped by the disturbed refraction through the glass in a similar way to how a black hole would trap particles in gravity. Stephen Hawking has calculated that a black hole would actually radiate particles, rather than simply swallowing everything in its path as some of the trapped energy escapes through a form of radiation. The recent experiment with laser light and glass confirmed the theoretical existence of “Hawking radiation” by creating this analogous black hole. By pointing an ultra sensitive camera at it, researchers were able to record the faint glow where the trapped light particles were radiating out in a new form.