Illusion Cloak Makes One Object Look Like Another

KentuckyFC writes "Metamaterials are synthetic substances that can steer light in any way imaginable. Their most famous incarnation is in invisibility cloaks which work by steering light around a region of space making any object inside that region invisible. But invisibility is just the start. A team of physicists in Hong Kong (the same guys who recently worked out how to cloak objects at a distance) have worked out how to create a cloak that makes one object look like another. Instead of steering light to make a region of space look empty, the illusion cloak manipulates light in a way that makes a region of space look as if it contains a specific object. So any object within that region of space, a mouse say, takes on the appearance of an elephant."

Comments

That's some sweet stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon people all over can put one on their wives to have them look like supermodels... Yay!

Re:That's some sweet stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Or put one on my... you know...like they made the mouse look like an elephant?

Re:That's some sweet stuff

[PopeRatzo]

Anybody who's ever gone to a drag bar knows this is not new.

When I moved to a new apartment in Chicago's New Town in my early twenties, my roommate (native of Kansas) and I walked around the corner to get a beer after a long day of hauling furniture. The first thing we noticed was the place was full of incredibly hot girls.

Or so we thought...

Fortunately, a bartender took pity on us two naifs and clued us in before we did anything irredeemable. My buddy, who was a few beers ahead of me, took some convincing, let me tell you.

Cognitive dissonance, when it involves the little head, is tough to deal with sometimes.

Re:That's some sweet stuff

[unlametheweak]

Instead of steering light to make a region of space look empty, the illusion cloak manipulates light in a way that makes a region of space look as if it contains a specific object, such as an elephant. So any object within that region of space, a mouse say, takes on the appearance of an elephant."

This is just going to piss off astronomers and give more credence to the UFO and ET enthusiasts when miscreants start projecting images of elephants floating around in the night sky.

Re:That's some sweet stuff

[mqduck]

If they're hot and never take their pants off, what's the problem?

Re:That's some sweet stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

We already have that. It's called "beer".

Re:That's some sweet stuff

[binarylarry]

My wife is a supermodel, you insensitive clod!

Re:That's some sweet stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you can use it on yourself :).

Invisibility cloak?!?

[Locke2005]

Invisibility cloak?!? Ha! I'll believe it when I see it!

It's Called . . .

[elcorvax]

Make up !

Doesnt sound like much?

[voss]

Imagine the ability to make a tank look like a heavy truck at a distance(say to a drone), or a rocket launcher to look like a stack of pipes on satellite photos.

Re:Doesnt sound like much?

[Red Flayer]

Ah, but if we're going to imagine making a tank look like a heavy truck, or a rocket launcher looking like a stack of pipes... why not just imagine world peace?

We're about as close to achieving a usable cloak of illusion as we are to achieving world piece...

Re:Doesnt sound like much?

[drinkypoo]

Seems to me like you could just make a small tank look like a heavy truck by hanging some shit on it. Ditto for the rocket launcher situation.

Re:Doesnt sound like much?

[shaitand]

The only way to do it is one step at a time, so I think I'll start by getting myself a piece.

Re:Doesnt sound like much?

[PopeRatzo]

..or a rocket launcher to look like a stack of pipes on satellite photos.

Or vice versa.

Re:Doesnt sound like much?

[garlicbready]

I'd prefer to make a tank look like a Volkswagen beetle. just imagine the field of battle, a swarm of beetle against beetle firing tank shells at one another
"Sarge it looks like they're bringing out the heavy artillery, I can spot 3 Ford Escorts's and what looks like postman pat's van in the distance"

It'd be great as a car alarm / defense system, one click of a button and the car changes from a Ferrari into a Robin Reliant (let's face it no-one's going to steal one of those)

Re:Doesnt sound like much?

[an.echte.trilingue]

But the ammunition will be different. When you see a truck, you hit it with High Explosive (HE) or heavy machine gun fire. If you see a tank, you hit it with Kinetic Energy (KE) or High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) rounds.

There is good reason for this. If you hit a tank with something that just explodes and rains shrapnel, the hit will just bounce off, maybe destroying the optics but that is about it. You have to pierce the armor, which you do by hitting it with something very heavy and slender (such as a rod of depleted uranium) traveling at high speed that focuses a bunch of energy on one point. The heat from the collision and spalling from the armor itself then destroys whatever is behind the armor.

This does not work for a truck. If you hit it with a KE round, the round will just sail right through it. If there is nothing vital (the driver, engine, fuel lines, etc) where the KE round happens to pass, then the truck will just keep rolling. That is why you hit it with HE or MG fire. The many small bits of metal from an exploding HE round have a much higher chance of hitting something vital than the single big chunk from a KE round.

As far as a tank is concerned, you usually only get one or two shots at it before it or its buddies start returning fire. If you hit it with the wrong ammunition, he is going to kill you.

It should be noted that the inverse is also true. Making vehicles such as a truck look highly armored increases their survivability in certain situations because AT rounds are rarer than lighter ammunition and an infantry squad with a machine gun is not going attack a tank.

I see...

[Red Flayer]

This article is full of win.

Fiddle with an invisibility cloak, and it can make any object look like another, say researchers.

Great! This is awesome. Now, where did I put my invisibility cloak so I can fiddle with it?

The researchers have even found a mind-boggling application. Their idea is to create the illusion that a wall has a hole in it, and then use the hole to look through the wall.

That's not quite as bonkers as it sounds. The wall has to be pretty thin, and what the new device does is allow light to tunnel through the wall in a way that would not ordinarily be possible. Amazing, if it works.

Yes, the wall must be thin -- thin enough for light to pass through it. In other words, thin enough to see through without the cloak on top of it. So, in order to see through a see-through wall, we put the cloak in front of it, then make the cloak appear to be a hole, through which we can see through the see-through wall. I see.

These gedanken experiments are nice and all, but I'll believe it when I see it. Or rather, when I don't.

Re:I see...

[PopeRatzo]

Now where did I put my invisibility cloak..

It's right in front of you.

Re:I see...

[brianc]

Their idea is to create the illusion that a wall has a hole in it

BIG DEAL... Wile E. Coyote was doing this (courtesy of A.C.M.E. Corp.) since
the 1960's.

ugg

[Dyinobal]

I hate all these cloaking articles they give really great 'examples' of what could be done with such technology but the actual news is much more mundane. In fact from the small freaking article it seems they have a math proof probably not even a prototype yet.

Re:ugg

[smaddox]

That is because the people writing these articles have no idea what they are talking about. You can't make a mouse look like an elephant, unless you are dealing with waves much longer than an elephant, in which case that would be like making a baseball look like an elephant sized baseball, and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the balls or mice or elephants. Only the size of the shadow would have relevance.

Metamaterials can only cloak objects smaller than the wavelength of light you are dealing with. Once you start getting to half wavelength objects the cloaking turns to crap, and only works for a very very thin bandwidth. That wouldn't be very helpful for visible cloaking, because we see a wide range of wavelengths.

What metamaterials MAY be useful is radar cloaking. There are also applications useful for scientific instruments such as NSOM (Near-field Scanning Optical Microscope), in which you can cloak the probe so that you do not interfere with the light you are trying to measure.

Metamaterials are very interesting, but not for the layman. Move along.

Magic: yes or no?

[MrEricSir]

Assuming this is real, does this qualify as magic?

vaporware

[j1mmy]

The summary is bad enough, talking about invisibility cloaks as if they actually exist. This and the prior work by the team are nothing more than computer models. I'm not discounting the importance of the research, just the way in which it's framed. We don't have such cloaks yet and likely won't for a long time.

Re:Paperclips in space?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I saw a disappearing and re-appearing paperclip while looking into space through a telescope I think I'd notice...

Hi, it looks like you are trying to make an astronomical discovery. Would you like to...

I think it's been done before

[crunchly]

Because I've definitely seen elephants that weren't really there. And the weird thing is that they were always pink. And only showed up after I've had a few... Hmmmm.

On future uses:

[gaderael]

Overheard in a girls washroom in the near future:

"Hey, there's something wrong with the faucet on this sink. No matter how much I turn the knobs, it only dispenses soap!

Re:Amazing magic tricks?

[FiloEleven]

Are you really all that amazed by "Wow! That guy bought a product and used it! On stage!"?!?

I don't know...does it run Linux?