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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.
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.
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
Well, the body radiates heat. Even if your suit could bend those, its going to end up heating up to skin temperature. Once that happens, its all over. It can bend IR where ever it wants, but since IR from a human body is relativity uniform to begin with (and you don't need detail to see a human figure heat blur on a IR sensor), you're still going to get a human shaped object on your IR sensors.
Pics or it didn't happen
What about very short but thick 2D objects?
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
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 *
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.
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.
The whole point of the negative index of refraction is the ability to do just that. We're obviously a long way from doing it, but scientists are beginning to see a glimmer of hope.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
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.
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
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.
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!
>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.
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!
I don't think so. One may absorb some light without having to reflect any.
everything in moderation
Then you'd be a dark spot, or two dark eye shaped spots.
--why?
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.