Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Closer To Invisibility Cloak
Aviran was one of many readers to submit news of a just-announced development in the ongoing quest to develop a working invisibility cloak, writing: "Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people and objects invisible. Researchers have demonstrated for the first time they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects. Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects" Reader bensafrickingenius adds a link to coverage at the Times Online, and notes that "the world's two leading scientific journals, Science and Nature, are expected to report the results this week." Tjeerd adds a link to a Reuters' story carried by Scientific American.
I would have claimed 1st, but someone appears to be cloaked.
Vescere bracis meis.
The lead engineer on the project added "Our engineers are currently testing the cloak extensively in women's locker rooms, on their speeding cars, to sneak into class late, to hide from bumbling crooks, and in other comic scenarios which have, to date, only been seen in lame movies. Our hope is to perfect the technology to the point where an engineer can sneak up on the bully that tormented him in high school and kick him in the testicles." After detailing the particulars of the complex optic engineering of the project, he concluded with "The day is now in sight where we will have a cloaking device truly worthy of an early-90's Kirk Cameron movie--or, God willing, even a Michael J. Fox made-for-TV movie from the 80's."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Scientists closer to fulfilling fantasy of hiding in girl's locker room.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
At first I was going to complain about the lack of pictures, but then I realized they wouldn't be too revealing anyway.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Very thin 2D objects eh? Nice.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080811-meta-material-does-not-render-anything-invisible.html Oh Ars.
Knows everything about nothing and nothing about everything.
I thought I remember reading on Slashdot how some MIT guys already did a proof-of-concept on this a while back.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
An obvious use will be from a military aspect. I wonder about how this technology will be received by various insurgents in our numerous war campaigns. Imagine a small troop deployment vanishing and reappearing in front of a goat-herder turned freedom fighter. I don't know if he would cut-n-run or stand fast to fight the "demons"...
"the world's two leading scientific journals, Science and Nature, are expected to report the results this week."
You can find the Nature abstract here. And if you have a subscription, you can read the full research and see the data they collected from experiments.
According to the Ars Technica article on this, the Science link will be here.
There seems to be a few more papers and articles on this but if you're interested you can search for optical metamaterials with negative refractive indexes.
My work here is dung.
if i can't see it, i can believe it
"His cloak is perfect... no tachyon emissions, no residual antiprotons." on a serious note, would this not be vulnerable to infra-red cameras?
Any problem caused by a tank can be solved by a tank.
This was posted in Pharyngula yesterday. The usual prescient commenters noted that nowhere on the researchers' pages was there active speculation about an "invisibility cloak", and it was probably just some reporters going wacky over the possibilities. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/08/get_your_invisibility_cloak_he.php
Now if they could only find away to modify the HP of my Intimidating Shout... :)
Eek!
This story has popped up here and there in the press today, but when I actually RTFA the actual breakthrough is negative refractive index materials, in the visible spectrum.
The application is not invisible tanks and infantry, but microscopy.
See here for photoshopped image that enhances the misleading headline http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7553061.stm
Now all we need to do is grab an epaper display and set up a quick Marauders Map script, and then we can go anywhere we want at Hogwarts!
And the locker room will be full of girls wearing invisibility cloaks.
Oh, sweet Jesus - what if cancer gets this technology and can hide from us?
And, even more off-topic... it's a damn good thing that Bin Laden didn't have this technology or we would have never found him.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Women getting their hands on this thing, using it, and going 'does this make me look fat?'. Oh, where will it end!? *gack*
Pics or it didn't happen
We live it 3 dimensions.So who cares if they can cloak 2d objects. lol
Sign me up for a blessed +5 waterproof one.
lol: You see no door there!
Professor Snape won't be too happy to hear this :P
Check out my blog!
"Journalist's impression of troops equipped with the new cloaking technology on exercise" That was so funny!
Eviscerate the Proletariat!
I wanted to cloak and go sneak into a movie.. but I have been looking for the dang thing for hours. Can't remember where I left it. Didn't match my shoes anyway. Can I get a faux fur one?
I mean, I can see right through it.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
That's not actually photoshopped, its for a different technology where they can project "3D" images onto a surface and it will appear to be far away. Lots of tiny glass beads and whatnot. If i drape you in that stuff and take a projector and project a car onto you, if there is the same car behind you, you will be camoflaged. The only downside is that you need all of these projectors and whatnot to project a background image.
Think Solid Snakes octocamo meets a movie theater.
...on the contrary my good man. This is what most of us have dreamed of since we were 13, and I intend to use it for just that purpose!
"The irony when tending a flock of sheep is the dogs you put in place to protect them are genetically mutated wolves"
Thank goodness we're too soon for the Treaty of Algeron, so we can develop all the cloaking technology we want. Take that, Romulans!
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
Aren't ALL 2 dimensional objects very thin? In fact, wouldn't they have a 0 thickness?
I'm wondering if this stuff might be of any use in space, as a kind of solar shield...
I realize it might not do much against the various forms of particle radiation, but against purely electro-magnetic radiation? Would it have any advantages over existing materials used for this purpose?
"thin two-dimensional objects" - hmmm. My oxymoron detector is going off!
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
I seem to recall seeing something as well.
If you saw something, it wasn't much of a proof of concept, was it?
To get my laptop past US customs without having it 'confiscated'...
Seriously though - how long do you think until any tech like this is restricted to military use only ? If you actually do achieve human-level visible-spectrum invisibility (even if you have to move very slowly to avoid being caught by reflection shifts and such and have to avoid anybody with IR) - it will be banned for civilian use like a shot. The people who want it for 'hunting purposes' will kick up a fuss but we couldn't take the risk of an invisible man sneaking into the white house and farting on the president's desk now could we ?
Okay... I tried to become serious but I failed... let's try this again:
Considering the real security implications of true invisibility from the naked eye - do you think it will be banned/restricted ? Do you think it SHOULD be banned or restricted ?
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
This technology could make an invisible cloak, not an invisibility cloak. You could see right through the cloak, at the person wearing it.
A true invisibility cloak must gather every incident photon and then re-emit it out the other side of the cloak as if it had passed through the wearer. That would require a highly magical system of fiberoptic cables (currently impossible), or else require measuring both the velocity and position of each photon (forever possible).
It would also have to do something with all the photons being emitted by the wearer, particularly the infrared photons (heat rays).
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
I'll believe it when I see it.
RTFA again - it's somewhat misleading, they've only said that the work brings cloaking from visible light 'a step closer'.
As far as I'm aware the only working material they've actually managed to create with these properties only has 'negative refraction' in the microwave region. I imagine cloaking in the visible region is still a long way off.
Also, I would entirely expect the military to be thoroughly interested in cloaking technology, perhaps not for tanks and infantry but being able to cloak things like surface-to-air missile launchers so the enemy can't see them from satellite imaging might be of interest (though it may be the case that these materials won't cloak from infrared as well).
I'd like to visit a few banks wearing this gizmo.
Considering the relationship between Berkley California and the Military, I dont know why UoB keeps making these types of break throughs. If UoB fashioned itself as a "rape victim" and cast the military as "the rapist" (not therapist) this could be called:
"Rape victim makes a better date rape drug."
If your following along this far, FSM bless you.
20th century Marxism is not progress...
Ummm does anyone else see privacy as an issue? Government and new porn sites popping up.
Scientists are not allowed to publish the same discovery in two different scientific journals. It seems that they will publisdh their findinmgs almost simultaneously both in Science and Nature. It seems to be unethical.
I think you mean your pleonasm detector. There's nothing impossible about thin 2d - it's pretty much the ultimate expression of thin!
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
I think a *very* thin two dimensional object would be a line (segment).
Now where did I put that invisibility cloak? I know I set it down around here someplace...
Saying your "phone ran out of batteries" is like saying your "car ran out of gas tanks".
I do claim firat post. I wrote about this in 1980 (I hope I still have the manuscript and rejection slip to prove it). I sure hope there isn't a patent involved.
Second, when did they ever experiment with two-dimensional objects? For that matter, where did they get two-dimensional objects? I'd thought our Universe rated N=3 for calculations involving Hilbert space (Calabi-Yau space)?
now they just can't find the blasted thing.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Regardless of whether what you described is possible, I guarantee that picture was photoshopped. It's a very rudimentary job: just do an edge-detect on the picture of the guy and then layer it over the background picture with the correct layer mode (additive, I'm thinking).
Oh, and the New York Times' cover would have been so much cooler if they'd used this technology.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
...out of how many?
Perhaps it's grant renewal time...
rj
how do they know???
Now we know where all that matter is...
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Being able to 'bend' light around an object is only a minor part of invisibility, I think - an object isn't invisible unless you can't see it in any way. The problem is that there is no guarantee that the light will appear to have followed a straight line through the 'invisible' object, as far as I can see, so there will be a visible distortion of the background.
Mono-layer substrates that are on average one atom (or molecule) thick are considered 2-d materials in physics. And depending on the context, such as the wavelengths or other length scale-setting parameters in use, 2-d can be much thicker.
Um, no, "thin" is a word which expresses a measurement in the third dimension. 2D objects (which don't exist in our 3D world, but we're talking about theoretical ones) don't have a third dimension. Calling a 2D object "thin" makes as much sense as watching a painting for 90 minutes and then complaining that there was no action and it lacked a plot.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
You should see my Rod of Lordly Might.
I put on my invisibility cloak and wizard hat.
If you want to see how it would feel to cloak; roll a Rogue or a Druid.
I know everyone is making with the jokes,but I for one really don't like the idea of this. Yet again,we have scientists seeing if they CAN do something,rather than if they SHOULD do something. As aggressive as the US has been lately,does anyone really want gunships,fighter jets,and whole squads of special forces rendered invisible? Not to mention what a powerful weapon for "regime change" this would be. No country would be able to protect their leaders when you could set up a sniper a couple of blocks away from them without ever being seen. All around,with such a huge potential for abuse and no positive applications that I can see,it just sounds like a giant bad idea. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
And just last week, we had the "Pensieve" thing-y from IBM.
When are the flying broomsticks coming?
What if, say, the Georgian troops had this tech right now. Might make life a little harder on the Russian imperialist forces, ne? Or is this scenario unacceptable because America isn't the bad guy?
Ever try making things out of invisible material?
No sig today...
Pics or it didn't happen!
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
Apparently my car has an invisibility cloak, because runners continually jog out in the street in front of it, jaywalkers stroll right into its path, and people constantly pull out right in front of me, even running stop signs and red lights to do it.
The on/off switch itself is apparently cloaked, because I can't find it. I bought the car used, so I have no user manual (I had it a year before I found out how to make it stop honking when the "panic" button gets pressed accidentally; a cop showed me).
As well as needing to know how to shut the dratted thing off, I'm wondering if it's a Klingon style cloak, a Romulan style cloak, or a Bistromatic SEP field?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I shall now be known as anonymous coward.
I'm sure tech like this will immediately have solid countermeasures in military applications. Where it probably won't have easy, cheap countermeasures is in police applications - or as you say "regime change" or terrorist applications. The common person wouldn't be able to afford or implement any effective countermeasures and so would be vulnerable to this. Military targets though would probably be able to detect this pretty well.
That one guy that said The Philadelphia Experiment was real really WAS telling the truth. Well, about the part about making an invisibility cloak. Probably not the time travel thing.
Once this technology is available it will become available to everybody, good guys and bad guys. But it will probably help insurgents and guerilla fighters more than large conventional armies.
I suppose because the technology is designed with the sole aim of deception it's difficult to think of non-militray or non-criminal uses, but maybe I just haven't seen enough bad sci-fi.
I think this would just be difficult to detect.
SOLDIER ONE: "I think there's someone in one of them invisibility cloaks over there."
SOLDIER TWO: "Send a couple dozen rounds into those bushes and see if you're right."
The best use would (probably) be to hide the bottom of an aircraft.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
my thoughts exactly. but on the other hand, it seems odd to think that they'll get it right in this lifetime. it'll take a bit until it becomes truly scary, and by that time we'll have adapted.. still not as good as having those scientists pick a more peaceful subject, though..
Or, what if the South Ossetians had it when the Georgians bombed innocent targets simply because they sought to form their own democracy.
By what name do you wish to be mourned?
I know everyone is making with the jokes,but I for one really don't like the idea of this. Yet again,we have scientists seeing if they CAN do something,rather than if they SHOULD do something. As aggressive as the US has been lately,does anyone really want gunships,fighter jets,and whole squads of special forces rendered invisible?
Hear hear! Perhaps we should revise the Geneva convention. From now on, all snipers must jump up and down waving their arms and yelling "Look at me" before taking their shot. All submarines must have PA systems that continually blast Rick Astley music when they're submerged. All spy drones must broadcast Flight of the Valkyries when on a mission.
I understand your point but, as long as the world has weapons, governments will be spending money on improving them (range/cloaking/accuracy/flexibility/etc.) If you go to the government leaders who control weapons funding and ask them "Should this weapon be improved?", once they're done laughing the answer will certainly be "Yes." And, assuming that this product would be fielded for military use as you imply, it would be seen as a measure to both increase our effectiveness on the battlefield and protect our troops. That would change the government's answer from "Yes" to "Hell yes." Right? Wrong? Doesn't matter - just the world we live in.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
That's not the cloak referred to in the 2008 article.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I just sold one of these fabulous cloaks to a neighbouring monarch. Mind you, he wasn't too happy when he went out in the street and the kids all shouted out "the emperor's got no clothes on".
I have another one, but I put it down somewhere and now I can't find it.
Shouldnt it be more like Scientists finally catches up to Harry potter Scientists catches up to witchcraft
That's sooo late 90's. Google is never going to index that! Man, their online visibility is going to be zip
.
While we are limiting ourselves from creating an invisibility cloak do we have to ban warfare at night and stealth aircraft? I mean, those things just aren't fair. In fact let's get rid of guns, camouflage, body armor, aircraft, and submarines. We can settle things with a boxing match. Technological advances in warfare has continued for centuries now. We've been down this path before with other technology but I wouldn't be too worried. Just as devices like these are created others are created to defeat them. It is the natural progression of weapons.
Time makes more converts than reason
Define invisible? If by invisible you mean not seen by radar systems, we have that now. If by invisible you mean from the human eye or the cameras eye, then that is something different. Seeing how this is refracted light, it's not going to make much difference or for that matter give much of a tactical edge against heat signatures.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Even a perfect optical cloak would still be detectable in many ways. Bear in mind that wearing a perfect optical cloak will render you blind. This means you'll have to navigate using other methods. You could wear infrared goggles, but that means you're visible in infrared light and therefore detectable. You could make yourself invisible to all wavelengths, perhaps, and then navigate by sonar. A microphone will pick that up easily enough. Likewise radar. You could, I suppose, navigate via a remote camera signal that displays your surroundings on a screen located inside the cloaking device. That would be disorienting but one could probably train for it or use a VR representation of your surroundings. Assuming, then, that you can obfuscate the video signal and avoid emitting any light yourself, then you'll be foiled by a cheap fog curtain at the entrance of a building. Or, if you want to be more practical about it, a metal detector. If the target of your assassination attempt is outdoors, you'd best hope that there's no precipitation, smoke, smog, or fog. And you won't be able just to point and shoot, either. Remember, you're blind.
Even assuming a partial optical cloak that lets you be invisible "enough" (perhaps in shadows) and still see somehow, you'll still be detectable. If this technology becomes available, technology to defeat it will, too. Off the top of my head... a sonar or radar (preferably sonar, I think humans are transparent to radar) system that compares the visual or infrared spectrum with the echos. You probably wouldn't even need a human to operate it; a computer could simply find the discrepancies between the images and report them. A detection system like this would probably be affordable even to smaller nations. If you wanted to get really paranoid, you could even have the computer automatically target human-shaped echo discrepancies and fire long range or remote tasers at them, killing the cloak as soon as it is spotted.
Or, save yourselves all the trouble, sprinkle sand everywhere and just watch for footprints. Or hold all public events in the middle of huge, 2-inch deep lakes.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
, ne?
This makes me angry.
are you serious? while i'll agree with your notion from moral standpoint, we're talking about bending visible rays here.. military applications would be rendered useless within seconds through the use of infrared, temperature, or any other device capable of intercepting and interpreting waves along the ems.. i highly doubt any of this would be used in large scale war efforts..
however, on the flip side.. it could be used in smaller policing situations where criminals without access or intelligence to counter this material could be easily taken down.. i think of safer hostage situations.. drug cartels.. heck, just city shootings.. but of course, all of this could go in a very very bad direction if the technology fell in to the wrong hands.. corrupt cops, pedophiles, etc.. and this is where i'll lean back on the other side and be a bit scared right along with you..
You could apply this opinion to pretty much any type of military technology that has ever been created. Of course people can use this technology to do bad things, and they probably will. However, if there is a demand for such technology, and it's scientifically possible to create such technology, then someone or some organization will eventually create it. I'd rather we come up with this technology first before some other country where it might be more likely to end up in the hands of terrorists. Also, the sooner we develop this cloaking technology the sooner we can develop technologies to counter it and to detect it.
I think it's funny that you say this cloaking technology would make it hard to protect world leaders, when I think this technology would be perfect protection for them.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
I know everyone is making with the jokes,but I for one really don't like the idea of this. Yet again,we have scientists seeing if they CAN do something,rather than if they SHOULD do something. As aggressive as the US has been lately,does anyone really want gunships,fighter jets,and whole squads of special forces rendered invisible? Not to mention what a powerful weapon for "regime change" this would be. No country would be able to protect their leaders when you could set up a sniper a couple of blocks away from them without ever being seen. All around,with such a huge potential for abuse and no positive applications that I can see,it just sounds like a giant bad idea. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
Very few counties could protect their leaders NOW if the USofA decided it wanted to send out snipers to kil them. And while it is morally debateable I think we would have been much better off had we sent in a team (with invisibility cloak or not) to off Saddam than invade.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
Found a whole room made invisible by this stuff
Once this technology is available it will become available to everybody, good guys and bad guys. But it will probably help insurgents and guerilla fighters more than large conventional armies.
Availability != accessibility. I'm sure the governments - the rich ones at that - will be in the first to get their hands on these things. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing in general. Like any other technologies, it really depends on against whom it's used.
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
I was going to ask if I could see any of the 'very thin two dimensional objects' they refer to, but they were . . . wait for it . . . cloaked.
One of recurring issues with the invisible man though experiment is that a truly invisible man cannot see. Since the light passes right through him - or in this version, around him - his eyes cannot absorb the light, so his brain can't perceive it. So for invisible camouflage to work, you'd have to keep your eyes exposed, or work out some tricky sure-to-break-down-under-combat-conditions fiberoptic camera wired to the cloak. Nice big binocular lenses that let you see for miles are probably out of the question.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
And while it is morally debateable I think we would have been much better off had we sent in a team (with invisibility cloak or not) to off Saddam than invade.
Well, the problem is that you'd also have to have offed his two incredibly odious and evil sons, all of his other family members, and the top 100 or so military and security people in his regime... otherwise the regime would still have survived, but only after more bloody conflict, and you'd still have in place the regime that invaded Kuwait and never abided by any of its getting-kicked-back-out agreements. And if you DID eliminate the regime with a couple hundred more or less simultaneous magic bullets, you'd have had the same power vacuum that Iran is still seeking to jump into via various attempts at fueling civil war - though that's finally settling down. In short, it might actually have been worse.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"Our hope is to perfect the technology to the point where an engineer can sneak up on the bully that tormented him in high school and kick him in the testicles."
Oh, don't do that. He's now one of your most devoted employees.
At first I was going to complain about the lack of pictures, but then I realized they wouldn't be too revealing anyway.
The USAF has already released a picture of an F-32 coated in this stuff. link.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
...the women's shower room will never be safe again.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Perhaps you would like to borrow my cloak of indifference?
... does it come in any other colors?
Have gnu, will travel.
lets say that is possible for a man to be invisible. How he will be able to see while wearing the cloak. His eyes must be covered by the cloak so the light could not be able to pass the barrier.
Ever to excel
"Yes, your Majesty, this cloak renders the wearer completely invisible. The only people that can tell you are wearing the cloak are those of noble birth, like yourself, or the intellectually gifted, such as science reporters and graduate students. Commoners like myself are completely fooled! Here, try it on. Your Majesty? Where are you?! I can hear your voice, but.."
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Resistance to an idea won't prevent its reality.
This technology will ultimately be available, and mankind will never learn to cope with it until it is a reality.
If we hadn't pushed so hard for nuclear weapons (which have killed far far fewer people than, say, firebombs or religion), we wouldn't have had the cleanest safest source of energy on the planet as soon as we did. (Note: windmills are a joke, and solar panels don't last nearly long enough for their initial cost.)
If only there were a way to make some dastardly weapon out of geothermal power...
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Please note that I didn't say what they should do after they wacked Saddam.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
>Just as devices like these are created others are created to defeat them. It is the natural progression of weapons.
You mean tools, not weapons. Many things that have potential use as weapons have non-weapon uses as well. It's only a weapon when it's used as one. Otherwise it's a tool. A knife is a tool when you use it to slice bread.
Their goal has to do with manipulating light. In the long run, there is the possibility of the foundations of this technology leading the the development of an invisibility cloak. The immediate benefits are more along the lines of better microscopes and working prosthetic eyes.
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
Actually I was a big fan when the US first invaded Iraq of simply having
George W Vs. Saddam in a one time event! winner takes Iraq. ONLY ON PAYPERVIEW!
Sadly that never happened...
if they do it then they can start thinking how to counter it too. just trying to not think of a technology never made the technology impossible for someone else to do.
besides, if scientists just started to think what they should do then the science world would quickly go into state of hiatus where nothing is done and where technologies aren't connected together at all.
besides, it's easy enough to invent positive uses for just about any technology. this could be used for security around vip's for example as much as it could be used to fight that security. snipers could do it from couple of blocks anyways, with or without cloaking, and have been doing for quite some time.
building a better gun has been a pretty usual scientist job for couple of centuries. among other things it has given us precision tools, space rockets and other tech with no positive uses.
What you are failing to realize is that science is not about if we should do it but only about the "can we do it." Talking to many scientists they take the same view on things such as cloning stating "Scientifically it's not a problem I can tell you how to do it. If we should I leave to the sociologists." Also remember that all technology has been created for the betterment of war and there is little progress in non-wartime.
2. hunt for the hides of weightlifters and wrestlers in central america
3. ???
4. IF IT BLEEDS WE CAN KILL IT
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The article says, "Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects"
What, please, is a very thin two-dimensional object?
Is that like the "little man who wasn't there?"
I met a man upon the stair.
A little man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
Gee, I wish he'd go away.
This feature is already built into a single sock out of each pair and car keys. However, the cloak only works intermittently as one moment they aren't there and and next they are.
that there is no value in partial invisibility. even with all of the weaknesses you point out, this tech is still very useful to exactly the kind of people who would most be interested in it: military applications
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...oh, nevermind.
he has an invisible dragon in his Garage.
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
Sounds ok to me. Like whack-a-mole except with Ba'athists and rods from God instead of furry toys and a hammer.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
No positive uses? Have you never been in a bar at last call? And halloween,that would be cool,Whooo look at my costume i am the geek with no life and no head...!1! boogity!.
Pandering karma whoring and history revision 4tW!
Want karma? Just paint the US as aggressive, W as stupid, M$ as a monopoly, Jobs as the second coming and linux as the solution to all of life's ills.
Ignore that the US overthrew a horrific theocracy that harbored AQ. Dismiss that Saddam and Ba'ath party invaded two neighbors because they could and killed a million or so of their own people. Write off the billions in arms deals and oil concessions and debts between Saddam and France, Germany, China and Russia, the primary opposition to regime change. Forget that the sanctions were about to end, leaving Saddam free to rebuild his military and WMD programs. Ignore that Iraq (and its neighbors, and the international community) would have endured another decade of Saddam followed by rule by his equally vicious sons. Point out costs and troops losses, and ignore that both are the result of religious conflict and terrorists from other countries(or that the losses are comparatively low). Blame our soldiers for civilian deaths, instead of the insurgents and jihadists hiding behind the civilians, or directly killing the civilians. Talk about 'blood for oil' and ignore that we hadn't needed Iraq's oil for ten years prior to the invasion. Drone about not giving the inspectors a chance to finish instead of talking about the twelve years of diplomacy, sanctions, inspections and shell games played by Saddam.
If someone calls you out, call them names like neocon or jingoist or sheeple, or use your mod points to bury their post. Don't worry about citing evidence, only people who disagree with you need to do that. And if what you are claiming gives you a warm self-satisfied feeling, then the facts don't matter anyway.
It's that easy!
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
If blowing air around an object with minimal loss in air flow makes it aerodynamic, does 'blowing' light around it make it photondynamic?
*trademarks for future lawsuits*
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
I think the ideal platform for an invisible cloak would be a bomb-car, or a chemical/biological/dirty bomb, or a missile (ignoring the fact that missiles are already un-interceptable in most practical situations). Alternatively, it could be applied to guns, knives or grenades - it'd be easy to fool someone into thinking you're unarmed if you have an invisible weapon.
we'll be able to cloak our flying cars before we can actually buy them? I'm just saying...
Twenda Learning: Educational Apps that Engage.
Invisibility cloaks have been around for years. They're typically worn by honest politicians, accurate journalists and girlfriends of slashdotters.
And how do you think "invisible hand of the market" gets into your pants and raids your wallet?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Or hold all public events in the middle of huge, 2-inch deep lakes.
That won't work once they've invented flying carpets.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
whole squads of special forces rendered invisible
imagine whole squads of geeks rendered invisible around hot women!
oh wait.. n/m ;)
I'm interested to see these "2-Dimensional objects" that this article is talking about. As far as my limited mathematical and scientific knowledge goes, it's currently impossible for there to be 2-D objects in 3-D space...
If this technology *can* be developed, then eventually it *will* be developed somewhere, by somebody.
If we ban it, and ban research into it, and to our darndest to get the whole world to ban it is well, it will still be developed...somewhere.
The only way to stop the rise of technology is to eliminate the human race (and I am assuming this is a not a viable option for you).
So, with that in mind, I will ask you...would you prefer that some other country get it first? Maybe one that doesn't like your country very much?
For all intents and purposes, there are many U.S. aircraft that are already invisible. So, this doesn't change anything. Yeah, you could potentially have cloaked tanks, etc. but that's nothing compared to a stealth bomber with nukes on it, so who gives a shit?
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
Why is the tagged with Star Trek? I don't recall any time ST used an invisibility cloak.
Should be tagged with Harry Potter.
Someone care to illuminate me on an episode I may have missed? I'd shutter if that was even possible - I don't think it is.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Um...one word? Blackwater. I have NO problems with the soldiers of the US military,I have many friends that have fought in Iraq. What I have a problem with is the fact that the government seems to be in love with mercs,who WILL end up with this technology. The men and women I know who have served believe in words like honor and justice. A merc will happily shoot an entire family for a paycheck. To see what kind of guys they are simply read here. And now it looks like they are being used on US soil which means it ain't just Iraqis that have to worry.
And the simple fact of the matter is the Army Rangers don't need this stuff.They already ARE invisible. believe me,I know. I had a buddy who was a Ranger get me a visitor pass to watch some exercises in the '80s,and he and his buddies decided to play "spook the hippie". needless to say,I was the hippie. We were walking to the range when suddenly the ground moved and I'm surrounded by Rangers. Hell,I wasn't a foot from them and I never knew they were there. And just as quickly they blended back into their surroundings and were gone. What worries me about this stuff is it in the hands of mercs like Blackwater. Would we have ever had King's "I have a dream" speech if this kind of tech was in the hands of mercs then?
What worries me is the genie getting out of the bottle. Like an earlier poster said,what if you wrap a chemical or biological bomb in this stuff? Do you think your average police force is going to have the tech to detect this stuff? But as always this is my 02c,YMMV. And as far as you accusing me of Karma whoring,mine has been at excellent for years and I couldn't honestly care less. Anyone who has read my past posts knows I simply speak what is on my mind. And this tech looks like it is going to bring a world of bad and little if any good. Maybe we'll get lucky and it won't be horribly abused. But I'm not betting on it.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
This technology renders an optical illusion. It does not prevent sonar, radar, or infrared from working properly. Camouflage has been in use since before man walked the earth, this is just the next step in camouflage. To answer your question regarding the ethics of science . . . if we don't pioneer it, someone more unscrupulous than us WILL do it. Then we won't have the research in the field to prevent their use of it. Better we know whats possible within the realm of science than be ignorant to its uses and weaknesses.
Who said that??
"they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects"
like turning it sideways so it disappears from view, as in Hanjuku hero vs 3D and Paper Mario?
SNAAAAAAAAAAKE?!
I don't think so. One may absorb some light without having to reflect any.
everything in moderation
(garage door noise)
Wife: Hurry! It's my husband!
Milk Man: Damn! What should I do?
Wife: Here, use this invisible cloak.
Am I eval()? - http://www.monst3r.com.br
A thing that sets this apart, at least for me, is that it isn't a weapon by its self. It's solely defensive. Don't want to be attacked? Just cloak!
It's like kevlar, it can be used for a more effective offense, but its real shining is in its defense.
Basically, I hope we end up hiding from threats instead of preemptively attacking them.
If this cloaking device doesn't require a source of power, implying that it's "always on" ... how would you find it?
We do what we must, because we can.
There's nothing to see here.
This goes along with the other videos that are obviously green screens that showed up a few years ago.
Hear hear! Perhaps we should revise the Geneva convention. From now on, all snipers must jump up and down waving their arms and yelling "Look at me" before taking their shot.
Been playing a game of CS I see....
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Then you'd be a dark spot, or two dark eye shaped spots.
--why?
Some things are only weapons.
Let's see you slice bread with an AK-47.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Who do you think Blackwater is hiring except for ex-Rangers?
The war on terror doesn't make Luddism any less ridiculous.
--why?
Sure, the military will kill to use a device like this... Literally. But let's not forget the implications of something like this in the porn industry! I'll never bu... download porn again! Er... maybe. Damn, it hurts just to type it down. I'll just put the cloak on and roam free instead. Now that I think of it, I'll need a cloaked car too! And a cloaked video camera! And maybe a cloaked box of kleenex... And a cloaked disposal bag. Damn, this is already getting too complicated!
No country would be able to protect their leaders when you could set up a sniper a couple of blocks away from them without ever being seen.
Cloak the leader. Problem solved.
Even a perfect optical cloak would still be detectable in many ways...
Very clever list of suggestions, but you forgot the most obvious one: a tachyon detection grid. If it worked for Geordi La Forge, it damn well works for me.
I know everyone is making with the jokes,but I for one really don't like the idea of this. Yet again,we have scientists seeing if they CAN do something,rather than if they SHOULD do something.
Why do people always assume that scientists ignore ethics when conducting their research? If you exclude the extremely vocal nutjobs, most debate about the ethics of science comes from the practitioners. It's rare that ethics are never considered. Granted, there have been some botches in the past, but outside forces should never be the regulators of science. (Look at how the US dropped the ball on stem cell research).
I call FUD. If this is actually made practical and not always just around the corner like flying cars and fusion power, it will take about two weeks to develop counter-measures. It only took me about a minute to come up with one surefire method to defeat it.
I'll be impressed when they cloak some *thick* two-dimensional objects. Or even find any.
Man you sound like the Federation (read: totally lame)
It's the ultimate Burqa!
....nothing to see here!
Given the sensitivity of passive night-vision technology, I doubt the light you need to get a useful picture would be missed by anyone looking at you. If it was enough for the human eye to detect it'd still probably only be noticeable if you stood in front of a solid white wall, and even then it might look like a smudge.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Heh. Somehow I don't see the fanfare in watching a cloaked President give a speech.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Ah, now I know why the highly cloacked and hard to see predator flashed his eyes every now and then. He was just taking a peek.
I certainly hope that the cloak can withstand landing impact.
Imagine criminals leaving large invisible items in the middle of the road, or worse, your enemy moving military equipment without satellite detection.
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We can settle things with a boxing match.
a boxing match would be preferable to a shooting war. And the outcome would be equally just or rational.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
Do you have any idea how cool this is for us cyberpunk fans? DO YA!?
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
What happens when they finally build a bird of prey that can fire while cloaked!? Think of the Children!
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
My first thought was to wonder whether or not infrared goggles would defeat this or not. The Scientific American article noted "limited spectrum", so my guess is that it would not be infrared invisible as well.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
That's easy. Point your AK-47 at someone else and say "Slice that loaf of bread."
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Surely if they occurred naturally, we wouldn't know they were there, unless they were large enough to walk into.
Raw science should not be bound by vague concepts of potential unethical use of discoveries.
If we followed that idea we would ( at best ) still be sitting in a dark cold gloomy cave. Wondering if we get to eat tonight, or be eaten instead.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Remember - it's the reflected light that you see. Not the object itself.
These dark eye shaped spots would actually be on the back of your head, as the light coming from your front wouldn't be redirected (it would be absorbed by your eyes, cameras, whatever).
You'd still be invisible to anyone in front of you, which should be enough in most cases.
Mafia hitman #1: It's settled, then. The senator's plane will take off but it won't land.
Mafia hitman #2: Good, it's done. Gentlemen, this conversation never took place.
Mafia hitman #3: Who just farted?
FBI agent wearing cloak: (oh shit)
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
If windmills are a joke, the punch line must be that:
"Today, U.S. wind energy installations produce enough electricity on a typical day to power the equivalent of over 2.5 million homes." (source U.S. Dept of Energy)
It's so funny I can barely stand it...
Hmmmm and they say the Philidelphia Exprmnt never took place....
Joe Investor
Dogcows, by their nature, are not all dog, nor are they all cow, but they are a special genetic hybrid. They are rarely seen in the wild. Since dogcows are two dimensional, they will stand facing a viewer "on edge" to avoid being seen. http://www.macfreek.nl/humour/tn31.html
The parent link has a much more informative link, and of course, I don't have mod points.... Someone mod it up please
I went to the article to see a picture. It seems like it is working well, cause I couldn't see it...
They don't HAVE to be military applications for this kind of tech. Besides, it's currently only visible spectrum, so radar, infrared, etc., would defeat it.
I see this as also being useful for scientists wanting to study creatures such as gorillas in their natural habitat too, if they get downwind. Assuming there is any habitat left, of course...
I intend to live forever, or die trying. - Groucho Marx
Ah you mean state the bleeding obvious truth then?
Nice try at positive spin on Iraq though, pity its bullshit.
Where? I can't see it..!?
Anyway, too bad I only believe in what I see.
No thanks, I'd rather use it to produce meat.
And they waste how many hundreds of acres of real estate?
To the humorless mod: This was a joke. Get a sense of humor and remod.
If flying while cloaked, I would assume the aircrew would use either GPS or INS (Inertial navigation System), probably both and each is accurate enough to fly blind for thousands of miles (though the pucker factor goes up exponentially when flying through mountains). For the most part, "Big Sky Theory" will keep you safe from other aircraft, but there is always that risk of collision. The real risk is that when dropping munitions, someone smart/quick enough would be able to track back the trajectory and then compute a possible course/location as soon as the weapon leaves the confines of the cloak.
Impetuous! Homeric!
The problem is that there aren't really devices to shield you against gun shots. Or explosives. The field has long not been level anymore.
Yeah, warfare has always been developed further, but that doesn't mean we should do it.
We'll finally be able to hide from those fucking aliens
This is not exactly rocket science, but it goes to show that there's a niche for something out there... If those scientists were not twiddling their thumbs and partaking of those semi-toxic chemical fumes, we would not have plastics, crayons, Post-Its...!
After all is said and done, there are things that scientists said cannot be done, and others that they claim are "statistically impossible". No matter what they claim, and I've read the Scientific American article about how close the reality of an Invisibility Cloak is, those scientists will probably be the first to be struck down during field tests because people will mistakenly suspect they are just floating and/or talking heads (i.e. ghosts, spooks, spectres, etc.). Bad for them, typically, and bad for the poor shmuck who just happens to be driving in the parking lot and does not see Dr. SomethingOrOther wearing his new Invisibility Tuxedo.
Where will all of this end? I truly believe there will not be an end, since war is typically inevitable and these so-called 'warlords' want the NEXT BEST THING in their arsenals of "Instruments of Destruction". Once Mankind realizes, as a whole, not just as miniscule groups, that wars are bad, then we may YET be able to settle things peaceably and calmly...
No matter how this "new development" is perceived, militarily used or civilian used, this comes as a huge shock to our systems. For the use of a light-bending system in a sci-fi series, check out "Ghost in the Shell, Stand Alone Complex, Episodes 1-26". It tells of a futuristic public security (read: "special forces police") squad called "Section 9" and their methods of infiltration... In Episode 1, there's use of an electronic 'cloaking' technology. Someone must've been watching some anime and didn't tell anyone... (hint, hint)
So it'll work great at night !!!
Problem solved.
Mr. Verteiron, I'm sorry, but Agent John and I are going to need you to step into the car.
Move along people! Nothing to see here! Move along!
You! You with the camera! I'll take that.
Shhh! Let's not firebomb him with truth.
The real punch line is this... he claimed technological ignorance wouldn't keep people from adopting the technology while simultaneously demonstrating how technological ignorance is keeping him from adopting technology. And... he got modded insightful for it! Thus intrinsically countering his proposition and proving that in fact ignorance is bliss.
Before I accepted Linux into my heart, I was a miserable man--a wanton sinner with no purpose. But now every day is filled with joy and true happiness, spreading the message of Linux! Have *you* heard the good news about Linux?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If movies have taught me anything (and they've pretty much taught me everything I know), all we need is a strategically placed bag of flour.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to woo the girl of my dreams by standing outside her window at 2 a.m. with a blaring boombox.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Glad to know I'm not the only one having that problem with paintings.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
Ever play the original Quake? There's a reason your eyes stayed visible when you grabbed the invisibility item... iD software knew you'd be blind otherwise!
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Yeah... they tend to be shallow, and all the characters are so 2-dimensional. Then they never develop the characters at all... yeah, I know, first impressions and all, but you can't just leave it there. It's not enough.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
More importantly, the fabric can be made as a screen (think sheer curtains). Displaying the image on the outside while allowing the "invisible man" reduced vision.
The material in question displays an image of whatever is opposite the direction it is facing (the image displayed on your belly is what you would see with the back of your head against your back). This makes it easy to spot with any strong directed light (spotlight, laser sight, you pick). The light will hit the suit and the suit will try to pass the light through, but the display is severely unlikely to be able to reproduce a light of that strength.
Problem solved.
Where is this material best suited? Coat tanks and planes to help protect them. Coat your front door with it and only allow a one way display. Coat your roof and ceiling with it (again, one way) and enjoy a more natural feeling home. You could put a window anywhere, and never worry about someone else being able to look in.
Boy I'd love to respond to this but religion is on my tail and I am pretty sure it wants to kill me. Sorry.
Let's see you slice bread with an AK-47.
Maybe not bread, but how do you think they make swiss cheese?
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
Yeah those used up nuclear waste bars that we end up storing in man made caves are really good for the environment. Windmills and solarpanels are fine alternatives perhaps you should do a lil more research before making such rash observations.