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A Step Towards an Invisibility Cloak

Posted by kdawson on from the who-goes-there dept.

An anonymous reader alerts us to work out of Purdue University in Indiana, where researchers have produced a design for a method of cloaking objects of any shape and size at a single wavelength of visible light. The math for such an invisibility effect was worked out last year at Duke and in the UK, but the new work, to be published in Nature Photonics this month, is the first practical design. The lead researcher, Vladimir Shalaev, notes that even though the current design works only at a single wavelength, and so would not convey true invisibility, it could still be useful — against, for example, night-vision goggles or laser target designators. Shalaev calls the technical challenge of producing an all-wavelengths cloak "doable in principle."

3 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Invisible to lasers, anyway. by Kandenshi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm curious about something though...
    I have absolutely no experience/knowledge of these laser targetters, but how much more expensive would it be to be able to use different wavelengths of light?

    1. Try wavelength X: Oh darn, they're protecting against that with a shiny cloaking device, so...
    2. Try wavelength Y: Profit!!!/explosions

    The bomb or whathaveyou is searching for a very specific wavelength(X) right? But still doesn't seem like it should be impossible to program it to cycle through 2-3 wavelengths(X->Y->Z) until it finds your dot to lock onto.

    Still, it's a neat toy they're working on. I wouldn't mind one once they build one that's less selective.

  2. One step towards the most duped story by noidentity · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sure, each article is a slightly different take, but I swear there have been at least four previous articles about some kind of invisibility device in the past year, all turning out to really be invisibility in a very restricted sense, i.e. a particular electronic device doesn't "see" the object.

  3. Re:Invisible to lasers, anyway. by mgv · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One wavelength hardly invisibility makes, but as the blurb suggests, it renders the target invisible to laser designators.

    Invisible to laser speed checks would have some non military applications.

    Michael

    --
    There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.