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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."
Notice when the Island moved at the end of last year? What date was it? What happened around that time? Tsunami.
Move along - Nothing to see here.
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.
From the article:
No, we are not going to be protecting islands with this thing anytime soon. And we're not protecting tsunamis from anything because the tsunami will just wash over this suckers unless we build them really, really tall. In which case, we're better off building a freaking wall.
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how do you end up getting ships in and out of the coast?
Quoth TFA:
It's a nice idea but a barrier like this would have to be made of strong stuff. That Asian tsunami a few years ago was able to pick up ten-feet-tall concrete blocks and throw them around like Lego bricks. I'm not sure if I'd want to be sitting downstream of something like this unless they're thinking of making them out of low-lying artificial islands, and in that case I don't know how effective they'd be under a tall enough wave. I'd like to have seen a bit more in the way of diagrams and specifics in TFA.
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What's wrong with these scientists? Why work on making tsunamis invisible when we have enough trouble with the ordinary, visible ones already?
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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?
-=Bang Bang=-
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...
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=-
As a general rule, when science fights nature, nature wins.
We are, after all talking about dealing with forces that have shaped the planet upon which we evolved. Star trek fiction aside, I don't think we have enough energy available to seriously hinder a tsunami.
Early warning systems so people can get the hell out of the way would be better then a 'stand back, I'm going to try science' approach.
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Not exactly. When you're invisible, the light simply passes through where you would have been as normal. You're just not in the way to block those waves anymore. According to the article, the water from the Tsunami mostly goes straight through as if the island wasn't even there. So, if there is a wave that originates from the east, it hits this cloak, the wave will continue it's movement west as if it never hit an island at all. The only ones who would be affected would be anyone who's behind that island, who has been using it to break their Tsunamis in the past.
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.
As is always the case, those with the money get to decide.
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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.
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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
If you can't see the tsunami, the tsunami can't see you.
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?
-=Bang Bang=-
The article mentions that a strong whirlpool is created near the center of the structure. Would it be possible to harness this energy to generate electricity?
A possible nice side effect of this could be that instead of letting the tsunami pass, it would decrease the energy of it, so that it won't be as destructive for those in the wake.
Or it could just make the wave pass through even more powerful *shrug* Seems like something to look into though.
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Tsunamis are harmless in open water - their height is on the order of a meter, and there's very little horizontal movement of water involved. They only get tall when they steepen as surf, and are dangerous because of their enormous wavelength (up to kilometers) which means one wave has an enormous volume of water to spill.
All of this won't affect drilling platforms at all, and for islands you need to build a structure all around it - a wall is a lot cheaper. In any case, the low incidence of tsunamis won't encourage anybody to build such structures.
JFWI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami#Characteristics
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OK, so after we surround every body of land with these things, tsunamis will go around all the obstacles and keep going around and around the planet. So how many tsunamis going around and around does it take to make an ocean useless?
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.
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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.
From what I know about tsunamis they are barely noticable until they reach shallow water, so offshore drilling platforms don't need this. I believe the point is for small low islands where the tsunami would otherwise wash right over most of the habitable area.
> This is /. after all right?
Yeah screw the lousy standards around here.
I'm going back to the rest of the internet where they have whole pithy paragraphs and entire knee-jerk domains.
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The whole idea is just silly. Everyone knows the only way you can save your island from the spiteful anger of the sky gods is through fasting and prayer.
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.
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