"LAW":

The connection between an object's ability to absorb and emit energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation--its absorptive and emissive efficiencies--has long been explained by something known as Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation. The law, a concept devised by Gustav Kirchhoff in 1860, states that absorptive and emissive efficiencies are equal at each wavelength and angle of incidence.

A new device developed in the lab of Harry Atwater, the Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science, breaks that normally tight relationship between the absorbed and emitted efficiencies of an object. The invention may also have important implications for sustainable energy harvesting systems and the development of certain kinds of camouflage.

Tweet   @brothersjudd