Tsunami Invisibility Cloak

BuzzSkyline writes "New Scientist is reporting on a lab-scale experiment that may lead to a tsunami invisibility cloak, which could protect islands, open-ocean platforms and even coastlines from dangerous waves by effectively making them invisible to tsunamis. The technology is based on the same sorts of negative index of refraction ideas that some physicists are exploring as they try to make an optical invisibility cloak, except that it works with water instead of light."

Comments

Dharma Initiative anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice when the Island moved at the end of last year? What date was it? What happened around that time? Tsunami.

Nothing to see

[Anonymous Coward]

Move along - Nothing to see here.

invisibility will help?

[mackil]

And invisibility will help you against a giant wave? I wasn't aware that Tsunamis basically hunted those vulnerable islands and coastlines down for large scale destruction.

Re:invisibility will help?

[Shadow Wrought]

And invisibility will help you against a giant wave? I wasn't aware that Tsunamis basically hunted those vulnerable islands and coastlines down for large scale destruction.

Well they tried giant towels, figuring that the Tsunami would think that since the Island couldn't see it, then it must not be able to see the Island, but that didn't work because Tsunami's are far to clever for that. Which isn't too surprising since Tsunami's are proven pack hunters, always attacking in waves.

Re:invisibility will help?

[Nerdfest]

Invisibility will help. What do you think the eye of the storm is for ... duh.

Jeez

[atomicthumbs]

What's wrong with these scientists? Why work on making tsunamis invisible when we have enough trouble with the ordinary, visible ones already?

Waterhenge!

[MaxwellEdison]

Anyone else notice that their scale model looked an awful lot like a certain circle of monolithic stones? We know the technology works. When was the last time Britain was hit by a tsunami?

Re:Waterhenge!

[AshtangiMan]

Right, so before that structure was built. That must have been the event that led to its construction.

Re:But what about the other islands

[pushing-robot]

Having said that, I'm not entirely clear how you can use the device described to protect coastlines. It looks like you need a 360 degree coverage for the device to work. That's not going to work for something like say...China's coast.

I think it could be made to work... but it would suck to be in Iceland.

Just Close Your Eyes

[CopaceticOpus]

If you can't see the tsunami, the tsunami can't see you.

Re:But what about the other islands

[MaxwellEdison]

Read the article? I'm too busy spouting pithy one-liners and making knee-jerk reactions based on my limited understanding of the subject matter! This is /. after all right?

Re:Okay... but...

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Well, they do have a wave function, but the wavelengths are really small....

E=hv.

Re:Okay... but...

[evilviper]

how do you end up getting ships in and out of the coast?

First, you draw this tsunami-wave canceling device on a placemat, labeling the ocean as "START" and the coastline as "FINISH". Print out thousands of them and hand out the placemats to family restaurants, along with a few boxes of crayons.

Then, you just go around collecting the "used" placemats, kindly filled out by unsuspecting 5 year-olds, and deliver them to cargo-ship captains.

Problem solved.