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Stealth Paint From German Inventor Werner Nickel
Posted by
timothy
on Sun May 04, 2008 02:51 PM
from the peek-a-boo-you-can't-see-me dept.
from the peek-a-boo-you-can't-see-me dept.
Gerhardius writes "Werner Nickel sounds like a Disney-style wacky inventor. He moved to the UAE to develop his previous invention: he had bred a worm whose excrement made it possible to grow radishes in the dry desert sand. That project failed so he moved on to the next item on his agenda, naturally a radar absorbing paint. While it certainly is not unique, there is some interesting history behind the development, and a proposed civilian use."
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Still a long way to go (Score:5, Funny)
But can that excrement allow humans to see the future and travel faster than light?
Re:Still a long way to go (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't get it, the OP is a reference to Frank Herbert's novel Dune [amazon.com] where the chemical produced by the sandwords of the desert planet Arrakis proved the key to faster-than-light travel by giving starship steersmen superhuman powers.
While I admire Herbert's creation of a science fiction novel based on modern studies of desert ecology, I felt the whole spice deal weakened the hard sci-fi goodness of what otherwise would have been a less fantastical book.
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What I never understood, is how they ever got to Arrakis in the first place, if you can't get there without the use of a substance only found there
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a space opera oblig (Score:2)
And you need to go faster than light to reach another planet while you're still young.
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To be utterly pedantic, the spice provided the key to faster-than-light navigation rather than travel/speed. The only way to navigate safely at super-light speed involves information that travels faster than light. It's an interesting point that all other Sci-Fi seems to have ignored; assuming we could travel faster than light, navigation would be
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But can that excrement allow humans to see the future and travel faster than light?
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Re:Still a long way to go (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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What are you talking about? Matt Black paint, applied to a mirror, does not result in a surface that reflects visible light.
Paint can certainly absorb photons, and translate the energy to a wavelength no longer recognizable as related to the source.
How did the parent post get rated so highly? Has the Slashdot community fallen so far that it's blin
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When light hits a surface, it can be reflected, or transmitted. If' it's transmitted then it's going to go through the paint and strike the metal and be reflected. What are you talking about? Matt Black paint, applied to a mirror, does not result in a surface that reflects visible light.
precisely my point. the black matte is many wavelengths thick in the visible. Radar has enormous wavelengths compared to the paint thickness. If black mat were 100th of a wavelenght thick then either 1) it would impedance match badly and therefore reflect 2) it would not be thick enough to absorb light.
Paint can certainly absorb photons, and translate the energy to a wavelength no longer recognizable as related to the source.
duh. this is known in physics as "absorption".
How did the parent post get rated so highly? Has the Slashdot community fallen so far that it's blinded by the mere mention of "scientific" concepts like index of refraction?
Maybe because I actually know what the hell I'm talking about?
Let me guess .. (Score:5, Funny)
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Civilian use? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Civilian use? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Civilian use? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Civilian use? (Score:5, Informative)
The transponders are in the airplanes, not on the airports. They help the airport's radar to see airplanes.
A transponder is a combination of a receiver and a transmitter that receives the pulses from a radar; generates a train of pulses that encode the identification and altitude of the airplane; and transmits them back to the radar. That way the guy sitting at the radar not only sees the airplane more easily, but knows which airplane it is and how high.
rj
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They are totally seperate and unrelated systems operating on radically different frequencies. The only things they have in common is that the base station antenna is typically mounted somewhere on the rotating radar antenna so that they are ensured to both be pointing in the same direction, and they generally share a single display, with the information
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btw. those 'jammers' are useless. By the time they detect the radar it's way too late.
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too late for Bobby Fischer (Score:2)
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Radar traps on the highway... (Score:2)
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My take on this; "Ah crap!"
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And the worms ate into his brain.
Uses (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps adding a layer of the paint to some consumer products, like PCs, might be a viable way of reducing the R.F. noise (and security issues that go with it?) leaking out.
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You don't need this paint to silence cell-phones in a theatre.. conventional construction techniques already exist to block wireless communication.
Here at the University of Toronto, there are several large lecture halls in the Bahen Institute of Technology building that are shielded, preventing students from using cell-phones, PDAs, wireless internet, etc.
I suspect in the case of movie theatres they have done some studies and decided that for whatever reason it is a better idea not to shield the movie h
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also there are simple devices that can make cellphones useless by interfering with their broadcast frequency (cellphone jammers) but i would think that aluminum foil backed wallpaper would be cheaper long term than a jammer, the advantage of a jammer is that it can be disabled from when the credits roll until the film starts...
i think the main reaso
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I work in a hospital. When I am on call, I go to Blockbusters, not the movies.
Re:Uses (Score:5, Insightful)
A doctor will also be without cell phone service when taking a tour of the Great Mounds Cave. That doesn't mean we should put up cell towers in there. What it means he should not be there while on call. Same goes for a theatre or any other venue where cell reception is naturally or artificially unavailable. Although any venue where a reasonable person would expect cell service but cannot get it, should have reasonable notice. In this case a note on the ticket or at the door to the theatre.
I'm so tired of people trying to make me responsible for their bad decisions. That's what your parents are for. While you're under 18. After that, take ownership of yourself.
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Regardless of who you are, it is not my responsibility to make sure you are available in case of an emergency. If you need to be available, it is your responsibility to adjust your behavior to increase the odds that you are available, given the provided situations you find yourself in.
But it is your responsibility to disable the phones of rude and obnoxious people?
If you want to take that on yourself, why not take a more direct route -- next time someone starts gabbing on the phone go take it away from them and toss it in the parking lot.
I always leave my cellphone on in the movie theater, so my kids can call if they need me. It's on vibrate, in an inside pocket where the light won't bother anyone, and I don't answer it. If it rings, I leave the theater (I always sit near the ais
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It's gonna work out real well for a university that blocks out phone calls like that when someone shoots up the school and nobody knows anything about it.
You'd think safety would be more important than some freshman getting a text with the quiz answers.
There should be many applications for this (Score:3, Interesting)
Then there is beamed power applications???
Perhaps this might lead to a method of shielding astronauts on their way to Mars? If it can deflect/scatter radar, can it be made to protect the Hubble?
There are literally thousands of applications where some shielding would be preferred to the current methods, especially in Military applications. I think that if he keeps it up, he might well help us discover how to shield from all manner of things. Shielding in Nuclear power plants is an issue that needs to be tackled better.
Imagine that if it can deal with radar, perhaps there is a way that this can lead to better coatings for fiber optic cables? 30Gbps not good enough for you? How would 100 Gbps with FTTH sound? It's all in how you deal with shielding.
Anything that is as thin as paint and does the job can lead to major improvements in many other things. I hope something really good comes of this and not just some Patriot Missle avoidance tactic.
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Antiradar paint does not scatter RF radiation. It absorbs it. If you coated the inside of a microwave oven with that stuff, it would (a) reduce the energy arriving at the food, and (b) heat up the walls of the oven, making your enchilada taste like burned paint.
You want the walls of the oven to reflect, not absorb.
rj
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Chances are that if it works for stealth applications it is absorbing signals instead of scattering them. In the presence of very strong signals it would heat up if that is the case.
That could still have uses in a microwave oven though, more shielding for the door/cabinet, and perhaps coatings for containers where one would rather generate heat at the container level instead of in the food.
Perhaps this could make it easier to cook egg
Kind of sort of. (Score:2)
Pimp my Ride (Score:2)
Doesn't everyone start that way? (Score:2, Funny)
he had bred a worm whose excrement made it possible to grow radishes in the dry desert sand.
And here I thought you always had to do a worm breeding apprenticeship before learning the radar absorbing paint trade. That's the way my college career councilor outlined it for me.
From TFA (Score:5, Funny)
Not new, not even of this century (Score:5, Interesting)
The japanese have been painting RAP on their skyscrapers for decades now to lessen FM and TV ghosting.
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Re:Energy = heat (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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