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Plan For Cloaking Device Unveiled
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu May 25, 2006 08:12 PM
from the thanks-to-the-romulans dept.
from the thanks-to-the-romulans dept.
Robotron23 writes "The BBC is reporting that a plan for a cloaking device has been unveiled. The design is pioneered by Professor Sir John Pendry's team of scientists from the US and Britain. Proof of the ability of his invention could be ready in just 18 months time using radar testing. The method revolves around certain materials making light "flow" around the given object like water."
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Science: Cloak of Invisibility Coming Soon 296 comments
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Science: A Step Toward an Invisibility Cloak 54 comments
Technology Review has a writeup on the latest advance in the lab towards an invisibility cloak made of metamaterials, described this week in Science. We've been following this technology since the beginning. The breakthrough is software that lets researchers design materials that are both low-loss and wideband. "The cloak that the researchers built works with wavelengths of light ranging from about 1 to 18 gigahertz — a swath as broad as the visible spectrum. No one has yet made a cloaking device that works in the visible spectrum, and those metamaterials that have been fabricated tend to work only with narrow bands of light. But a cloak that made an object invisible to light of only one color would not be of much use. Similarly, a cloaking device can't afford to be lossy: if it lets just a little bit of light reflect off the object it's supposed to cloak, it's no longer effective. The cloak that Smith built is very low loss, successfully rerouting almost all the light that hits it."
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Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Useless for people (Score:5, Interesting)
So no invisible surveilance cameras or human beings- the light would miss the lens of the camera or the eye of the human and they'd be completely blind.
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Re:Useless for people (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Useless for people (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Useless for people (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Useless for people (Score:5, Funny)
Just look for where the tank treads end.
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Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Invisible overlords? Frankly, I can't see it happening.
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The Romulans... (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot's at it again (Score:5, Funny)
Ooops! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ooops! (Score:4, Funny)
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Good (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
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Cloaking for fun and profit (Score:4, Interesting)
http://projects.star.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/projects/MED
My favorite one is the breakdancing guy in the bottom video.
In theory, this post will be modded down... (Score:5, Interesting)
I RTFA, and frankly, it sounds like confirmation of the idea that mathamatics in general is WAY ahead of the other sciences. Things that are perfectly possible in theory are out of our grasp in the real world... right now, at least.
Even as a mathmatician, the fact that there's so much theory and so little actual DOING has me worried. There's a tiny flaw in the use of 'metamaterials' to make objects invisible... we don't HAVE metamaterials.
Though, it beats sticking my head in the sand by a long shot.
The split ends are horrible.
Re:In theory, this post will be modded down... (Score:5, Insightful)
I RTFA, and frankly, it sounds like confirmation of the idea that mathamatics in general is WAY ahead of the other sciences.
The thing you need to understand is that mathematics isn't a science. You can create lots and lots of perfectly valid mathematical theories, prove them true, and they don't have one tiny bit of them relevent to the real physical world. A great example of this is being able to cut a sphere in a certain way into an infinite amount of pieces, and reassemble it into a larger volume. It works great as far as the mathematics is concerned. But obviously you can't do that in the real world because real matter can't be infintely divided.
That's not to say that mathematics isn't usefull. Obviously it's used all the time to make models and predictions. My point is that there's no such thing as mathematics being way ahead of the other science, since mathematics doesn't really relate to the other science directly. As far as science is concerned, mathematics is just another tool in exploring science.
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Re:In theory, this post will be modded down... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Nonsense -- water does not look like light. (Score:4, Insightful)
"A little way downstream, you'd never know that you'd put a pencil in the water - it's flowing smoothly again.
"Light doesn't do that of course, it hits the pencil and scatters. So you want to put a coating around the pencil that allows light to flow around it like water, in a nice, curved way."
The truth is, water scatters when hitting something, too. It just doesn't *matter*, because all particles of water look the same to us. So, if the water particle that would have been in the middle without the disruption ends up on the far right, it doesn't matter!
However, we are very, very good at telling different pieces of light apart. At best, this will provide very good camo, where pieces of color from the environment behind you show up on you instead. At worst, the disruption from light working in unexpected ways will make this "invisibility" be a very noticeable beacon. You know how your eyes always flick to something that moves (animated ads, anyone?) This would be like that.
Re:Nonsense -- water does not look like light. (Score:5, Informative)
"What you're trying to do is guide light around an object, but the art is to bend it such that it leaves the object in precisely the same way that it initially hits it. You have the illusion that there is nothing there"
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A cloaking device? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tenuous at best (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Tenuous at best (Score:5, Funny)
Well, you start by throwing it through a jewellery store window.
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Re:Tenuous at best (Score:5, Funny)
Pretty incredible, eh?
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Re:Radar? (Score:4, Interesting)
abet harder to set up a passive radar system but not imposable..
when you send out the radar wave and look for what bounces back that is active.. when you have something on the other side of your target looking for that wave - that is passive.
if you setup two towers and the broadcast to each other and you fly between them they can tell even if they can see it actively... if you set up a perimeter of them say 3-4-5 or more and they all talk back and forth
with this type of tech the item would be invisible to active and passive radar.. although I bet it would show some type of ghosting effect for areas near it via passive scan.. it would be very hard to track.
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