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A Step Towards an Invisibility Cloak
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."
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
One wavelength hardly invisibility makes, but as the blurb suggests, it renders the target invisible to laser designators. Wonder how much power it can handle, would it be an effective shield against weapons-grade lasers?
-- Alastair
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.
Wake me up when you've got an "invisibility" device that'll let me sneak into the girls locker room without getting seen.
As long as there is some sort of fitness standard before you can wear said garments.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
XXX#######
Yes, just what our society needs. So we get these "invisibility cloaks" and what is next? Use in law enforcement? Cops can spy on us from behind these cloaks? An amendment to the Patriot Act? I'm not saying these are necessarily bad things, but we sure as hell have to weigh the possible negative uses of such a technology.
Following suit with that article about the RIAA pushing for pretexting in California, I could just see them getting their hands on invisibility cloaks.
Be careful pirating music, the RIAA could be in the corner watching!
Oh noes, invisible sharks with lasers !!!
Shakespeare poems - infinite monkeys with infinite time.Computer tech support - a few trained ones working from 9 to 5.
A friendly note to the photonics project managers, researchers and general staff:
Don't make the same mistake I did. Learn from my experience that one should never, ever put the invisibility generator on top of the anti-gravity device.
It's Denton. Remember the briefing.
;)
Don't mod me down just because you don't get it.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Ahh yes, the Emperor's new clothing line.
What about the ground? Can the light even bend around an object that is stuck to another? I don't think so ...
So wouldn't it make two dark spots on the ground? that could be used to identify if someone is using an invisibility cloak.
According to TFA:
So basically, this will be made out of (a form of) gold, and encircle the object to be rendered invisible?
I'm betting that, in order to work, it will need to be inscribed with the phrase: Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
that's why I responded. /. is a great site for professionals (with or without our flaws), great interviews, direct link to Intel and of course goatse I really don't understand. report abuse would be great so this shite could be deleted.
first off, theyre slowly replacing aging nvg's with FLIR systems, second nvg's sensed a spectrum, though i forgot which one, ultraviolet was it?, the point is its not a single wavelength... even if i'm wrong and it is only one wavelength then it would be trivial to broaden the spectrum or have the sensors modulate.
the same thing with a laser, you modulate the beam according to a hash function for each laser/missile pair, the string that produces the hash code could easily be communicated real time from air support to the troops on the ground painting the target.
congrats, you added 3 more seconds at most to a target's life. even if that allows say, a tank, to get off one more shot the expense and other undocumented and probably cumbersome changes are not worth it.
now if/when they develop one that cloaks across the entire practical spectrum of light you may have a problem, but not one that cant be solved through the trivial process of painting the ground in front of the target and having the guidance system deliberately raise the elevation of the impact point by.. say.. 10 feet... let alone using IR or radar/gps guidance instead.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
If we don't let Japan and China learn about the technology, who will build it? All joking aside, countermeasures already exist and in many cases are far more advanced. Either way India is not considered an enemy http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/04/19/AR2006041902480.html. If you're concerned about outsourcing, don't be, let the Indians go to school in the US, that way at least our universities don't rot from lack of use.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
This innovation and others like it have seen far too much press already. I know, I know, it's slashdot and no one RTFA anyway, but if you did you'd quickly realize that there really is nothing to see here. Let me explain at least for those of you who will read a comment if not any of the articles appearing in popular science sources for the last several months:
Imagine for the moment placing an object behind a mirror. Better yet, inside a mirror. Amazing! You cloaked it from observation from visible wavelengths! Understood, this is much more meta and complex than all that. It bends the light around instead of sending it away. But that's all. In the same way that you can't see anything on the other side of the mirror, nothing on the other side of the mirror can see you. We're not going to see invisibility cloaks or special forces in lightbending armor out of this, because even if the technology were practical and cheap the special forces would still be blind. Any light you let in is light that's not making you invisible by being elsewhere.
These results are undeniably groundbreaking, but they are received as something entirely different from what they really are.
While I agree that Slashdot shouldn't ban any exercise of free speech, I'm pretty sure one of this site's rules is no advertising your site in discussions, espeically if it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. This guy is just spamming articles with ads, without making even the slightest effort to make it look like a normal response. I agree that there needs to be a "report abuse" link that /. higher-ups can then review and make a decision based on. There's a difference between free speech and system abuse.
They've been here for years, you just noticed?
To combat against multiple frequencies, you could place the cloak for X inside the cloak for Y inside the cloak for Z. Extending this way to full spectrum would be impractical, but multiple frequencies could more easily be blocked.
Don't worry. We have the technology to prevent such abuse. Simply place an upside down basket on a stick, and place a dollar bill under it. If a record executive or a lawyer is hidden in a corner, they won't be able to resist and the basket will fall on them.
I'm not really into nanostructures, but this sounds pretty fragile. Someone has already pointed out that mere dirt could render it useless - but what about damage? Military vehicles aren't exactly going to be dusted off with badger hair brushes, so if the nanostructure is eroded by water (and cleaning brushes) the coat isn't going to last long. And if water can't do it small stones probably can and there are lots of those in the field.
I see this as a general problem with light-bending nanomaterials - while they might work in a lab environment, real-world environments have enough ways of disrupting them to make them much less useful.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
There's nothing in this article to suggest that the student with the Indian name (Uday K. Chettiar) is not an American citizen, nor that Wenshan Cai or Alexander V. Kildishev are not American citizens, or that Vladimir Shalaev himself is not a US citizen (the fact that he was educated in Russia isn't an impediment: my grandparents were educated in England, and became citizens as adults); a cursory Google search finds nothing to suggest that they are not US citizens, either. However, I do know that Title 22 of the US code includes International Traffic in Arms Regulations (http://www.epic.org/crypto/export_controls/itar.h tml), and that universities and private companies in the US are required to stick to these regulations pretty closely, for fear of losing all federal funding: technologies that are covered under these regulations can only be worked on by US Citizens and those with "permanent resident" (green card) status. The fact that there have been a number of prosecutions of companies for technology transfers to China is proof that these regulations are taken seriously (though one does wonder about equality of enforcement with this particular administration).
So, apparently you assume that anyone without a European name is not a citizen - or, at least, anyone with an Indian name is not a citizen: you didn't question Prof. Shalaev, Mr. Cai, or Mr. Kildishev. Looking at your website (http://www.geocities.com/deskofreporter/), I see that you do raise some interesting points about Taiwan's relationship with China, but that the tone you use in doing so has an aroma of xenophobia. I'd suggest that you look into the history of great American immigrant patriots, beginning with Alexander Hamilton and continuing on through Albert Einstein (he became an American citizen in 1940 and remained one until his death).
Out of curiousity, what comment would you make about Japan or China excluding US scientists access to this research? Would you object? Because the way things are going, the US is going to be increasingly finding itself in the position of other countries having a lead in certain technological areas.
As to India not signing up to the NPT, that would carry a little more moral weight if the US wasn't ignoring the treaty itself.
And Iranian students seeking bombs, is that a particular problem at your university?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Yes, but does it have a +6 enchantment?