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Stealth Paint From German Inventor Werner Nickel
Gerhardius writes "Werner Nickel sounds like a Disney-style wacky inventor. He moved to the UAE to develop his previous invention: he had bred a worm whose excrement made it possible to grow radishes in the dry desert sand. That project failed so he moved on to the next item on his agenda, naturally a radar absorbing paint. While it certainly is not unique, there is some interesting history behind the development, and a proposed civilian use."
But can that excrement allow humans to see the future and travel faster than light?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Except that commercial airports use transponders, not radar, to locate planes.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
So, paint the transponder.
rewriting history since 2109
All that stressful military/terrorist stuff aside, that paint might just be good for silencing cell phones in movie theatres. It's generally illegal to jam any sort of licensed transmission, but creating an environment that weakens the signal is a good workaround.
Perhaps adding a layer of the paint to some consumer products, like PCs, might be a viable way of reducing the R.F. noise (and security issues that go with it?) leaking out.
Think of a more efficient microwave oven. If it can scatter radar signals, it might just be a better coating for the inside of microwave ovens.
Then there is beamed power applications???
Perhaps this might lead to a method of shielding astronauts on their way to Mars? If it can deflect/scatter radar, can it be made to protect the Hubble?
There are literally thousands of applications where some shielding would be preferred to the current methods, especially in Military applications. I think that if he keeps it up, he might well help us discover how to shield from all manner of things. Shielding in Nuclear power plants is an issue that needs to be tackled better.
Imagine that if it can deal with radar, perhaps there is a way that this can lead to better coatings for fiber optic cables? 30Gbps not good enough for you? How would 100 Gbps with FTTH sound? It's all in how you deal with shielding.
Anything that is as thin as paint and does the job can lead to major improvements in many other things. I hope something really good comes of this and not just some Patriot Missle avoidance tactic.
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Oh, jeez...
The transponders are in the airplanes, not on the airports. They help the airport's radar to see airplanes.
A transponder is a combination of a receiver and a transmitter that receives the pulses from a radar; generates a train of pulses that encode the identification and altitude of the airplane; and transmits them back to the radar. That way the guy sitting at the radar not only sees the airplane more easily, but knows which airplane it is and how high.
rj
Actally the energy of radar is very low, except you stand directly in front of the emitter. Or when was the last time you got cooked by the radar from the airport next to you? You must have really good sensors to detect such low heat. I assume the heat of computers and electronics on board of a plane or the exhausts of the turbines are the much bigger problem for the one doesn't want to be 'seen'.
He said they were *used* by them, not *on* them. Time to level your reading skills.
That's really not how transponders work. They do not receive the radar pulses and send them back to the radar with ID information encoded into the pulses.
They are totally seperate and unrelated systems operating on radically different frequencies. The only things they have in common is that the base station antenna is typically mounted somewhere on the rotating radar antenna so that they are ensured to both be pointing in the same direction, and they generally share a single display, with the information received from the airborne transponders superimposed over the radar video. You can break either system, and the other one will still work perfectly, just so long as the antenna is still turning and the display still works.
"While it certainly is not unique, there is some interesting history behind the development, and a proposed civilian use."
Finally, something better looking than tin foil to cover my house (and my hat)!
You're describing the distinction between primary and secondary radar. Yes, they're separate systems, but they're both radars. One operates on reflected pulses ("skin painting"), the other on transponded pulses, but they both get their bearing information from the pointing direction of the antenna and their range information from the out-and-return travel time of the pulses. The only difference is that the secondary radar gets information that is furnished by the airborne installation: identification ("squawk code", including emergency and hijack notifications) and pressure altitude.
rj
When light hits a surface, it can be reflected, or transmitted. If' it's transmitted then it's going to go through the paint and strike the metal and be reflected.
What are you talking about? Matt Black paint, applied to a mirror, does not result in a surface that reflects visible light.
Paint can certainly absorb photons, and translate the energy to a wavelength no longer recognizable as related to the source.
How did the parent post get rated so highly? Has the Slashdot community fallen so far that it's blinded by the mere mention of "scientific" concepts like index of refraction?
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there's a big difference.
The japanese have been painting RAP on their skyscrapers for decades now to lessen FM and TV ghosting.