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How To See Through an Invisibility Cloak

Posted by timothy on from the very-zen dept.

AMESN writes "Ways to bend light around objects and render them invisible are becoming a major field of scientific study and gaining ground. While no actual invisibility cloak exists yet, researchers are also theorizing on how to beat the perfect cloak."

12 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The Possibilities by Mikkeles · · Score: 5, Funny

    The kind I want to go out with. WooHoo; particle launcher!

    --
    Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
  2. How to see through an invisibility cloak? by JKDguy82 · · Score: 5, Funny

    turn it on?

  3. rain by wizardforce · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No invisibility cloak can hide the fact that it's still a solid object. That or utilize various frequencies of EM as it would be extremely difficult to defeat radar + infared + visible + UV all at the same time.

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    Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    1. Re:rain by thelamecamel · · Score: 4, Funny

      How would it show movement? AFAIK the cloak should be able to move around and this movement shouldn't be visible to you.

      Or do you mean they won't be able to make a flexible cloaking ninja suit that keeps cloaking the ninja as they walk, despite the suit bending? The solution to that, of course, is to roll around inside a giant hamster ball/zorb cloaking device! Watch out... i'll sneak up on you and ROLL YOU TO DEATH.

  4. The easy solution, from the article by JonC88 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just throw a stone at it.

    1. Re:The easy solution, from the article by sopssa · · Score: 4, Funny

      But what about when teleporting becomes common use technology? The invisibility cloak would have a teleportation field on top of it. The rock would be just teleported back to the person, and it could have a nifty effect in the invisibility drawing to smooth the effect (ie., instead of just teleporting, the stone would travel at a slightly increased, but still not noticeable speed for a moment)

    2. Re:The easy solution, from the article by Idiomatick · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I imagine throwing a stone at something you don't know is there to find it would be quite the feat.

  5. You can't beat the perfect cloak... by unitron · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you can, it's not perfect.

    The real problem isn't detecting it. It's knowing that you need to be trying to detect it in the first place, and approximately when and in what area.

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    I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.

  6. Invisibility by NoobixCube · · Score: 4, Insightful

    An "invisibility cloak" these days doesn't just necessarily apply to the visible light spectrum. The cloak could be a thermal or radar "invisibility" cloak, leaving an object perfectly visible to the naked eye, but invisible on other scans. Penetrating thermal invisibility cloaks might end up more important, because camouflage can take care of visible light from overhead, it's the thermal that's the giveaway.

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    Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
  7. It's rather easy... by Antiocheian · · Score: 5, Funny

    You can drink a blessed potion of see invisible or eat an invisible stalker's corpse while invisible.

  8. Re:How about a $5 solution? by John+Hasler · · Score: 5, Funny

    > In any case, a well placed pebble should also work as it would bounce off in
    > a very obvious way.

    Better yet, a well-placed bullet. Just spray bullets in all directions at all times.

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    Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
  9. The solution by RudeIota · · Score: 5, Funny

    Everyone knows firing short, repeated bursts of tachyons between a 3 dimensional grid made up of Federation star ships is the most effective way to detect invisible, cloaked objects.

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    Fact: Everything I say is fiction.