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How To Cloak Objects At a Distance
KentuckyFC writes "All invisibility cloaks to date work by hiding an object embedded inside them. Now a group of physicists have worked out how to remotely cloak objects that sit outside a cloaking material. The trick is to make the cloaking material with optical properties that are exactly complementary to the space outside them. Complementary means that the material reverses the effect the space has on a plane wave of light passing through it. To an observer this space would appear to vanish. The scientists say that to cloak an object sitting outside the cloaking material, first measure its optical properties and then embed a "complementary image" of the object within the cloak. So a plane wave is first distorted by the object but then restored to a plane by the complementary image of the object within the cloak (abstract). An observer sees nothing. This method has another benefit. Objects hidden in conventional cloaks are blinded because no light enters the cloaked region. But objects that are remotely cloaked like this should still be able to see their surroundings."
You'll know when cloaking is really working when the monthly dupe of "cloaking, this time for real" stops showing up here.
The better question is, can they fire while cloaked? I hear the Klingons made substantial advances in that area.
So if you are hiding a tank in the desert, paint it desert colors?
We've actually gone one step further. We've actually built an entire tank made out of sand. Our prototype required very little materials other than that: a bucket, a shovel and a beach.
It's still a prototype though since it breaks easily, but it does blend in with its surroundings, and it has been proven combat worthy by having our troops stomp over sandcastles.
Wouldn't pr0n constitute a complimentary image? Cuz I gotta tell ya with the right pr0n nearly everything around it disappears.
How hard can it be if even girls manage it?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This technology, if adopted by the military, will probably only be useful against civilians. Against another sophisticated military there will always be a way to detect what you're trying to hide through other means than visible light - magnetism/alterations in the earth's magnetic field (in the case of big chunks of metal, heat), RF emissions, overhead imaging, radar, sonar, etc.
You won't be able to hide your tank like this, but the small laser turrets to keep the neighbor's cat off the lawn might work... now if only those sharks would stop swimming.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Only on /. would someone try to explain such science in terms of bitmasks. :)