Invisibility Tech Demo Tomorrow In NYC 86
Velcroman1 writes "Invisibility cloaks and deflector shields, once a staple of popular science-fiction, are now the real deal, researchers say. But here on Earth, top researchers have been battling too, not over the fate of the empire but over whose tech will someday shield U.S. ships. Fractal Antenna Systems came out swinging Wednesday over a 'perfected' invisibility cloak by researchers at Duke and Imperial College. Company CEO and inventor Nathan Cohen issued a scathingly critical press release throwing very visible zingers — and claiming he invented it first. '[Their tech] makes you more, not less, visible,' Cohen said. The company says a patent-pending deflector shield built off a variant of the technology can divert electromagnetic radiation around an object — and they plan to show it off Friday in New York City, at the Radio Club of America."
Ok I'l say it. (Score:5, Funny)
If it works you won't see it.
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There will be nothing to see here and people will move along.
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Until they bump into it.
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Re:Ok I'l say it. (Score:4, Funny)
Pictures, or it didn't happen.
Oh, wait...
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There are a lot of pics online of people wearing invisible suits - just Google it dude.
Pegasus (Score:3)
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Now we can finally catch up with Romulan technology.
Yeah, the ivisibility cloak is awesome, but people will still spot you by the big generator you're pulling along behind you.
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Also, to quote Family Guy, "It smells like Fred Flintstone's ass in here!"
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Nope, we will be able to actually fire weapon while clocked.
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Not worth it (Score:5, Funny)
I went to their last demo, and I didn't see anything!
Picture of the device in action (Score:2, Funny)
As you can see it is remarkably improved over previous versions.
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No, no, guys, one is a whiteout (like the above pic), the other a blackout. But neither is invisible really, just depends on your background :).
I won't believe it till I see it (Score:2)
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Pics or it didn't happen.
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If you can include tactile AND olfactory feedback, that'd be grand!
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I didn't happen...yet.
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Pics or it didn't happen.
No pics or it didn't happen.
FTFY
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How do you know that it didn't ? ;-)
Re:It isn't real until ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
You can. It's called a fucking Faraday cage.
Haha, right, because a Faraday cage won't show up like a blinding spotlight on radar or anything. That's like saying a building makes you invisible because you can't see someone inside. Sure, I guess in a sense that's correct, but you can still see the damned building.
Re:It isn't real until ..... (Score:5, Funny)
"Captain, I can't find the enemy destroyer anywhere! There's nothing but a big faraday cage moving at approximately the speed of a destroyer in the middle of the ocean!"
"Damnit! Where could they be?!"
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But if you put a camera behind the building looking away from it and connect it to a large screen in front of the building then someone located in front of the screen won't see the building.
My understanding is that these devices work similarly. They don't block radiation, but bend it.
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You can. It's called a fucking Faraday cage.
No, actually, it's a PMC surface formed out of a dielectric slab.
Tech details here:
http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/nmat3476-s1.pdf [nature.com]
Inevitably, it had to be said (Score:3, Funny)
Move along, move along, nothing to see here.
Seeing is NOT believing.
Pay No Attention to The Man behind The Invisibility Cloak.
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No, it's "*NOT* seeing is believing"
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That's the cornerstone of faith.
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Well, whatever happens, I think we can be confident that we won't see anything all that interesting at t the demo.
Invisibility cloak or ninja? (Score:2, Funny)
It's hardly a cloak if you're using a ninja as your subject.
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Kudos to beating me & being first to mention ninjas dude! ;)
From TFWS (Score:5, Informative)
There are a couple of videos on the Fractal Antennas website Fractal Antenna: Whats New [fractenna.com]. Looks like they have something for microwaves. But when they start talking about how this could be scaled up from microwaves to visible light I start to get a bit skeptical.
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As far as I understand it these metamaterials are built out of circuits that have to be about 1/10 of the target wavelength. We already have 32nm semiconductors so it shouldn't be that hard. Getting it to work in 3D, on the other hand, isn't going to be easy.
Sorry (Score:1)
I'll be in New York that day, but I'm not going to see this.
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Hey, even if they can pull the wool over everyone's eyes & the emperor does in fact have some clothes...I can't see a market for this. Except maybe invisiporn.
Hardly new technolgy... (Score:1)
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Wonder Woman has had her invisible jet for 50 years... the only shame is that her outfit wasn't also invisible.
Those amazons, what astounding science and industry they must possess. If they ever reveal their hidden location they'd absolutely clobber Apple in the phone market.
Invisibility... (Score:1)
I just can't see that.
meh (Score:2)
Oxymoron (Score:2)
LIke an auction of priceless artifacts.
I had a demonstration yesterday (Score:1)
and sure enough, they /were/ under the couch all the time.
BS, BS, BS... (Score:3)
When you can bend light in vacant 3 dimensional space with EM fields so as to conceal large moving objects you can bet your ass that we'll
never hear a thing about it
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of course we will, don't be stupid.
I mean you are being mind numbingly short sighted and stupid. IQ 70 Stupid.
What good is such a device if you don't tell people you have it?
Seriously, the 'We might have a warship off you coast..and maybe we don't.
maybe there is a platoon of soldiers walking up to your base of operations right now, or..maybe not.
Yes but... (Score:2)
Um, sorry guys (Score:1)
It's already been done with great fanfare [youtube.com]
Takes a Star Trek approach to detect as well. (Score:3)
Changing the resonance frequency of the scanners (radar) will detect it.
quote:
“If you move half a degree in angle, it stops working.
If you move half a percent in bandwidth, it stops working.
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/11/14/deflector-shield-and-invisibility-cloak-wars/ [foxnews.com]
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Sensitive doppler testing should detect a deviation in wave peaks and valleys due to the additional physical distance traveled.
In fact, I'll bet that tech already exists and could be readily adapted.
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Not if they rotate the shield harmonics.
Warning Ladies! (Score:1)
It would be a good idea to avoid using the bathrooms....for obvious reasons.
I'm sceptical (Score:2)
I am very skeptical to any such announcements. I would like it better if every one would keep the exited reporting for after the demo. Especially /., which considers itself to be well educated on scientific and technological matters.
As a physicist (PhD) working on radio science in relation to astrophysics I have seen a lot of people proposing a lot of awesome inventions, that never worked...
Predator Alien, or Predator Drone??? (Score:3)
I went through the website, and it is not really for the lay-person of the Internet.
From what I read and watched, we have not gotten to the point where we can make a human being "invisible" to the point where the visible light spectrum is affected.
However, with regards to electromagnetic spectrum, such as radar, microwave and other methods of scanning, searching or detection? Wow. The shielded objects simply are not there. Not a "hole in the air" sort of not there, I'm talking "does not exist in that portion of space/time" kind of there.
This will move the whole radar detection game into obsolescence, and we'll be back to using human observers, or using different spectrum devices to detect the air turbulence from the cloaked object's passing.
Revoke somebody's science writing license (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not "perfect". It has the nifty property that it doesn't reflect anything. But it only works from one angle, and for one frequency (and a microwave frequency at that). It's not even "perfect" at eliminating reflection, just much better than previous ones.
It's a clever but minor advance blown entirely out of proportion because some jackass attached the word "perfect" to it. Everybody who repeated it needs to have their science writing license revoked.
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Perfect is correct.
It perfectly invisible to that frequency and that position. Previously it wasn't perfectly invisible under the parameters.
You need to understand science and accurate speech before trying to pull peoples science cards.
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The headline doesn't say "perfect under these parameters". It says "perfect". And we're getting a followup article about a demonstration, so that everybody can go see the "perfect" invisibility cloak, in which nobody outside of a few materials scientists would be interested if it weren't for that misleading application of the word "perfect".
And I was talking about pulling "science writing cards", not "science" cards. The scientists are doing admirable work here. It's some science writers pushing fluff who a
Been there, done that (Score:2)
that's nothing (Score:2)
EZ mode..detection (Score:1)
every anti stealth detector ship should have an aviary full of seaguls and release them for detection. :) :)
just follow the seagulls and you will find the stealth ship. if you build it with chips they will come
Nathan Cohen is killing Wikipedia (Score:3)
Nathan Cohen and Fractal Antenna Systems have been on a crusade to corrupt Wikipedia. They have been paying multiple editors who have been systematically making advertising edits to multiple Wikipedia articles, all coming from IPs that map to the vicinity of Fractal Antenna Systems' headquarters in MA. They remove any reference to competitors (eg. Fractus) and any references that disagree that fractal antennas are the be-all end-all. The bulk of the corruption is on the fractal antenna article, but Nathan Cohen's name has been tossed in to several other pages... Notable people from XYZ, notable graduates from university XYZ, etc,
See the talk page on Fractal Antennas for all the details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fractal_antenna#Obvious_bias_in_article [wikipedia.org]
So... did the demo ever happen? (Score:1)