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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."
But Guenneau cautions that large structures like islands and coastlines are unlikely to become invisible anytime soon, because building the many small islands needed to protect one is such a big job.
"It's crazy - maybe only people in Dubai could do this," he adds, referring to the spectacular artificial islands built there.
Smaller structures such as offshore oil platforms would be easier to protect, he says.
I personally like the little model. It must've taken awhile to CNC machine that.
How are the tourist ships and supply ships supposed to get to the island at the center?
Maybe something like a drawbridge, except that the "fingers" could go sideways, slide down, or lay down?
Or maybe some of the channels could be made big enough with an acceptable loss of efficacy?
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
I know the wording is awkward. But, keep in mind, light is understood to be a wave as well. Thus, the mechanic of causing a tsunami to go seamlessly around an island should be nearly the same as causing a light beam to go around the object. This wouldn't block the Tsunami wave, the wave would continue as normal, as if nothing had happened. The Island also would not be touched by the wave either. The metaphor seems to work.
early warning system is much cheap then numerous artificial islands.
rebuilding is much cheaper then numerous artificial islands.
most people will detect, warn, evacuate and rebuild - this kind of (very very) expensive prevention simply does not make sense on a 1 in 100 year (if not much more) disaster prevention.
it is like putting in bullet proof glass in all the windows of your house just in case the couple next door decide to have a son who might want to buy a bb gun later on in life...
...for the rest of us!
If they cloak one thing that just moves the damage somewhere else. After all, it's not stopping the wave. So who gets to decide who gets cloaked and who doesn't?
Tsunamis only get tall when they approach land. The danger to oil platforms is the massive energy involved, not the height of the wave. So this would only be impractical for structures close to the shore.
mediocrity rules, man
What happens to the neighboring nations or coastal countries that can't afford them? I know they can't be built currently, but wouldn't this just shift the devastation. a bit like protecting yourself from a flood by pumping the water into your neighbors' houses?
-=Bang Bang=-
I'm guessing here... but here's my take on it...
It's not a barrier and does not "block" the waves.
It simply disrupts them, like pebbles on the bed of a river. The wave goes around the islands, pretty harmlessly, but the interference pattern created, essentially protects the object at the center.
It's a very subtle approach, not the brute force on you seem to think.
I was thinking this, too. However, if you read the article, it's intended for man-made structures and, if you look at the model (and read the article), it doesn't seem like it'd be feasible for anything on a larger scale, anyway. You'd end up destroying most of your own coastline and aquatic habitat in the process, and seriously screwing up the local ocean pretty much permanently.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
Nice model, but totally impractical. Tsunami waves are extremely long, like hundreds of meters. You will need to surround your island with these pillars for the same order of distance, or these pillars will be invisible to tsunami, and not in the way authors intended.
So we are tacking what, thousands of pillars surrounding the island? Really dumb idea.
They follow the radial corridors.
Since ships aren't waves, they presumably have little trouble following them.
Note that the Netherlands is not under water, and all those man-made lakes behind dams have not all drained. And when it comes to warming up the planet by adding CO2 to the atmosphere, Science has done a great job against nature. When science fights nature, science generally wins, but nature does always get a few really good hits in first.
The idea from TFA is not to use additional energy to hinder the tsunami, but to merely redirect the tsunami's energy. It's like the Judo of climate control. If I understand the article correctly, the posts do not have to be strong enough to stop the tsunami. That's the entire point of it.
I hate it when I make a joke and I get modded "+5 insightful". Mod the stupid comments "funny", not "insightful", pleas
It wouldn't be perpetual motion, it would take energy from earthquakes, landslides, volcanoes, etc. that cause massive amounts of water to be displaced.
It wouldn't be perpetual energy, but it would be free energy, very similar to tidal power Unless I'm missing something obvious, this wouldn't be perpetual motion...
It's also going to be impractical for structures that aren't close to shore. You have to build artificial islands all around the structure. It will cost a lot to build artificial islands in deep water. Therefore, it's impractical in shallow water, and impractical in deep water. Nobody's going to build one, it's just an interesting application of wave physics, transferring the idea of being invisible to light waves to being invisible to ocean waves.
I don't think tsunamis are a big problem for offshore drilling platforms in the first place. From what I've read, they use the ballast tanks in daily operation, and they can also be used to rise above the waves. That seems a bit more practical than surrounding it with an enormous structure to provide protection against something that probably won't occur in the lifetime of the rig in the first place. AFAICT, this solves a problem that basically doesn't exist.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
oh for fucks sake.
the islands were not built by anyone.
There is no design.
And this "dumping the problem onto the next guy" thing is about as retarded as claiming that building earthquake proof buildings will lead just make the earthquake worse for everyone else.
Not really, their point is pretty good. If a Tsunami would have broken up on your island, the "invisibility" rings will instead pass it on to the guy behind you.
Of course, a better analogy of why that has to be acceptable is that, you can't be held liable if you duck and the guy behind you gets shot. It's not your fault that he was unwilling or unable to duck too.
Fanatically anti-fanatical