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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=-
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=-
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.
The Netherlands have various kinds of incredibly costly structures erected to prevent those 1 in 100 year events that you seem to scoff at. Sure, they could just sit around waiting for one to happen and clean up after the mess by pumping out the water and holding it back again after a flood, but I doubt anyone would really want to live there knowing that it could happen to their grandkids because the government was too cheap to protect them.
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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.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
early warning system is much cheap then numerous artificial islands.
Definitely.
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.
Er, well, that's not so clear. I mean that was roughly the logic behind not building up the levies in New Orleans, and the cost of that project was several times less than the resulting damages from Katrina. A project which they are now engaging in so as to prevent a subsequent disaster and make people feel safe returning to/investing in the city, meaning they payed for the protection but had to also pay much, much more due to not having it when they needed it.
Now I'm not saying this particular system is cost effective for any particular city. I think it would mostly depend on what kind of materials and engineering you need to make effective barriers. These aren't artificial islands like the ones in Dubai the article mentions. They're big walls. If a tall column of reinforced concrete sunk into the ocean floor, like the struts of a large suspension bridge, is sufficient then I don't think it would be that ridiculous. And think of it this way -- just because "the big one" only comes once every hundred years, there's still plenty of "pretty big ones" that cause lots of damage every single year.
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...
If I may engage in some analogy abuse, it's more like the couple next door has a son who pretty consistently fires off a few rounds in random directions every night, sometimes using larger calibers than others. How long are you going to bet that he hits someone else's house and not yours? It probably sounds like a safe gamble up to the point the .45 flies through your living room.
Hurricanes, typhoons, and tsunamis happen regularly. They hit sections of the coast every year, causing damage every time. They aren't hypothetical. Even the big ones aren't. They're more like matters of probability, and thus time.
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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=-
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
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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