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Scientists Make Item Invisible to Microwaves
Vicissidude writes "A team of American and British researchers has made a cloak of invisibility. In their experiment the scientists used microwaves to try and detect a copper cylinder. Like light and radar waves, microwaves bounce off objects making them visible and creating a shadow, though it has to be detected with instruments. If you can hide something from microwaves, you can hide it from radar and visible light. In effect the device, made of metamaterials — engineered mixtures of metal and circuit board materials, which could include ceramic, Teflon or fiber composite materials — channels the microwaves around the object being hidden. When water flows around a rock, co-author David R. Smith explained, the water recombines after it passes the rock and people looking at the water downstream would never know it had passed a rock. The first working cloak was in only two dimensions and did cast a small shadow, Smith acknowledged. The next step is to go for three dimensions and to eliminate any shadow."
...that would love to be invisible to microwaves.
The article mentions that doing the same thing to light waves should be possible.
How long do you think till you can pick up a Cloak of Invisiblity at your local MegaMart?
I'm unsure about the water claim, although it is true that you can't tell the difference that doesn't mean that it's not different, the water has been moved all over the shop, but it looks like it hasn't been affected.
Other than that if they make something invisable from visable light then it wouldn't be able to see anything, so a person would be blind or a bot would be virtually impossible to navigate, because you couldn't see it or track it...
Still, very interesting idea.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
This title is absurd. Invisibilty?
The research is very kewl though, and i hope it progresses. But why not lay off the stupid titles, and produce results based on kewlness or usefulness, instead of what can be termed with a popular buzzword. Information Technology is bad enough from its buzzword infusion. Must we destroy legitamte research/discoveries as well?
Have you read my journal today?
This will allow for more variety in TV Dinner desserts, because they can just shield it so only the stuff that needs to get nuked will get nuked. w00t!
Unpleasantries.
You know you are a fat geek when...
the first thing that came to your mind when reading this summary was:
"Oh cool, no more burnt and undercooked mini-pizzas!"
I really should go outside more often.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
They could've posted a pict...
Oh, wait. Never mind!
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
..from my ass, so to speak, but I imagine you could leave certain frequencies uncloaked, enough to slip in, say, remote video from a drone flying nearby or surveillance cameras in the area or GPS satellites in the case of bots. Perhaps a super-advanced version could shift cloaked frequencies on the fly in order to prevent jamming/detection of the video source even. I dunno, if this works in the first place it seems like there should be ways around the "blindness."
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
This was already addressed to some degree in the SciFi book "The Last Mortal Man". The reasoning for making them illegal was that the criminal element used them to evade law enforcement. I'm sure the DHS would have alot to say about this.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
What!! This is awful!! It means my microwave item-detecting device, which I walk around with to detect objects and random items, will now be obsolete!!
Both follow the path of least resistance. It just happens that most of the time light follows a straight line. A mirage is an example of when light doesn't follow a straight line.
...in my home.
Only funny thing about it is.... I can't find it.
I bet if I could find it though, I'd win the Nobel prize.
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I don't think this follows, at least when we're talking about metamaterials. So far no one has invented metamaterials for optical wavelengths, as metamaterials rely on complex structure that's somewhat wavelength specific. It's easier to play "fool the photon" with microwaves (because of the longer wavelength) or X-rays (because of the higher energy) than it is with visible light. (Xiang Zhang's experiments in extending near-field effects of visible light are a very different mechanism, and are lumpedin with metamaterials simply for lack of a better term.)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Romulan Bird of Prey? (Or equally, the small Klingon ships also armed with the cloaking device?).
:-)
Sorry, grew up on waaaay too much startrek
Ah, so the ship is the cloaking device! So much for putting on pointy ears and stealing it.
Apparently, he had an accident with the targetting mechanism.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
I'll go out on a limb on a series of "ifs" (and maybe a bag of physics naivetes), but let's say we perfect this manner of imperceptibly "derefracting" light. And let's say we also complete the ambitious work identifying and manipulating gravitons, still hypothetical. Could we "cloak" spaces and matter from any interaction with our universe, not just electromagnetic? Maybe the Stong and Weak Forces would remain for interaction, but practically, outside the tiny diameter of a nucleus, could anyone notice?
Could a "gravity cloak" create subspaces operating as independent universes? Could we contain matter too highly interactive for current use safely? Like a tiny black hole conveniently near a device it's powering, or a pair coupled into a wormhole for "faster than light" travel through custom-folded space? Vast amounts of stuff crammed into pocketsized spaces.
Maybe the old playground philosphers choosing between "teleportation or invisibility superpowers" will finally have a lab to figure out which is really better.
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make install -not war
Sounds like a better version of stealth. I recall reading that an early attempt at a stealth ship did TOO good of a job of dispersing microwaves (compared to background reflection of empty ocean) and showed up as a moving 'hole' on surface radar screens. Assuming that this technology could be applied to bending light around an object, it would need to do so without creating obvious distortions.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I make myself invisible to microwaves by unplugging them, or turning off the lights.
...
Sneaky little buggers, always watching you and beeping at you to take your dinner or coffee out
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Yes, I know - this won't do that much against baryonic radiation, but for e/m . . .
True, but to dismiss something like this because it's still possible to detect the cloaked object would be in error. Think about the camoflauge gear militaries already use. You can still see them. HOWEVER, if you're not looking carefully enough, it's a lot easier to miss them in certain environments. The point of cloaking or camoflauge is not to make you undetectable, but to make it require more resources to detect you, just like the point of encryption is not to make the data unreadable to others but to make the threshold required to read it (in terms of money, time, etc.) high enough.
An infiltrator who appears as a dark spot will still be much more effective in how he's so hard to detect.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Seems to me, even given perfect invisibility, that the object in question would radiate energy all by itself.
Do some spectranalysis, and you immediately know something fishy is going on. (Copper won't radiate like the ground, for example)
fluids follow the path of least resistance. Light follows the path of least time.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Already done. Scientests have been invisible to human women long before slashdot was even conceived
Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies. -- Zoso
Amazing stuff.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
There's this thing called a pinhole camera, it's a relatively new advance. By allowing this pinhole of light in with the proper equipment just enough light could be absorbed to allow the user to navigate. Of course there would be a visible pinhole floating in space, but could you reliably pick it out at a distance of more than a few feet?
To expand: light following the path of least time is known as Fermat's principle. Fermat's principle can in turn be derived from Feynman's path integral formulation of quantum mechanics; it is related to the principle of least action. Feynman's book QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter has a lay derivation of Fermat's principle from path integrals (due to constructive superposition of quantum phase differences).
I'll be able to heat up my Chef Boy-R-Dee without taking it out of the can!
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
This is a violation of the Treaty of Algeron, the romulan empire will not stand idly by and watch as you disturb the delicate peace between our peoples! Hand over your research and all of your devices to Romulan high command at once, or they will be taken from you.
You didn't point out a single spelling mistake in the original post. You're certainly not the Definition Nazi.
Just paint the copper cylinder pink and turn on a cheap and simple Somebody Else's Problem Field.......
Technically, Romulans are Vulcan.
In Soviet Russia, backwards is everything.
There's this thing called a pinhole camera, it's a relatively new advance.
And, folks, here's a case indicating the limits of moderation by the unwashed masses. A pinhole camera is the very oldest type of camera. Having no lens, it can be made with a box and (gasp!) a nail. It is known to have been known about by the Chinese somewhere in the 5th century B.C, and Aristotle in 4th century B.C. Oh, how a small bit of research in widely available knowledge could have saved the parent poster from looking like a dolt!
But this worthless (and incorrect) piece of wisdom gets moderated up by the clueless who don't take the time to understand what the !@# they're reading.
Just when I start to get hope for mankind, I see something like this...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
There's this thing called sarcasm, it's a relatively new advance. By stating a clearly false proposition in the proper tone of voice a touch of humour can be added while still conveying to the reader the intended meaning. Of course on the Internet the tone of voice can be lost, but what sort of moron would fail to realise this?
That story has a totally misleading title. I even filled a complaint about it in BBC Complaint section, which follows:
---- cut & paste --------
I'm writing because I feel cheated by the above news story, which is entitled "Experts create invisibility cloak". Is it now the most popular story in BBC's website, according to the top stories link, but it is totally misleading.
INVISIBILITY means "not visible; not perceptible by the eye", that CAN NOT BE SEEN. Now, the story isn't about making something NOT BEING SEEN, but about a cloack that deflect microwaves! The story even reads:
"In principle, the same theoretical blueprint could be used to cloak objects from visible light. But this would require much more intricate and tiny metamaterial structures, which scientists have yet to devise."
So, the title could be easily corrected to "Experts give huge step towards invisibility", but to assert that they "created an invibility cloack" is totally wrong and misleading. BBC has alwasy been a brand synonymous to credibility in news. However, I'm sure that if stories like that keep hiting the front page, just to attact readers, that will suddenly deteriorate. I'm ashamed.
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I feel so pissed off when I click a link to a news story that has the clear intention of misleading. Praise God that I don't watch Fox News.
But a moving object is still traceable, as it will physically disturb the environment around it. A human will trample vegetation, break branches, or leave footprints etc. A tank will leave track prints, stir up a whole lot of dust, and many other such things.
So this technology would be most useful for hiding static vehicles/persons, or perhaps even moreso for hiding buildings (think, a whole, semi-invisible bunker).
I wonder how it would affect sound waves as well. Perhaps sonar would pick up things that radar would not. After all, a mirror or glass might be used to distort or reflect light, but does little against sound...