Glass Invisibility Cloak Shields Infrared

An anonymous reader writes with the latest advance in the quest for a cloak of invisibility (Michigan Tech University's press release). We've been following this research as it develops; here are stories from each of the last four years. "Invisibility cloaks are slowly working their way up to shorter wavelengths — starting at millimeter-long microwaves and working their way to the nanometer wavelengths of visible light. EETimes says we are about half way there — micrometer wavelengths — in this story about using chalcogenide glass to create invisibility cloaks in the infrared. Quoting: 'Invisibility cloaks cast in chalcogenide glass can render objects invisible to infrared frequencies of light, according to researchers at Michigan Technological University... Most other demonstrations of invisibility cloaks have used metamaterials composed of free-space split-ring resonators that were constructed from metal printed-circuit board traces surrounded by traditional dielectric material. The Michigan Tech researchers... claim that by substituting nonmetallic glass resonators made from chalcogenide glass, infrared cloaks are possible too...'"

Comments

Goodness me!

[Fluffeh]

I so totally didn't see this story coming this morning...

Re:Goodness me!

[Anonymous Coward]

this friends is why Funny mods don't contribute to a user's positive karma. almost none of them display any real wit and are generally not very funny. this post here is in the same ballpark as the puns that news anchors constantly use i.e. "today we have *shocking* news about your electricity prices". i guess the viewer is supposed to say "ha-ha, it's about electricity and he said shocking, how amazingly clever and original and humorous!" those viewers are the same people who mod up posts like the parent post. "ha-ha, it's about a cloak and cloaks make things invisible so he didn't see this story coming, how amazingly clever and original and humorous!" except that it wasn't.

on the plus side, at least it wasn't a ten thousandth iteration of a tired old Slashdot meme. though lame jokes like this getting modded to +5 Funny is a Slashdot meme in and of itself.

Re:Goodness me!

[tenex]

An invisibility cloak eh... right then; I'll believe it when I see it.

Re:Goodness me!

[Robin47]

on the plus side, at least it wasn't a ten thousandth iteration of a tired old Slashdot meme. though lame jokes like this getting modded to +5 Funny is a Slashdot meme in and of itself.

Sorry, just used my mod points or I would mod you up.

Re:Goodness me!

[archangel9]

how amazingly clever and original and humorous!" except that it wasn't (snip) ...on the plus side, at least it wasn't a ten thousandth iteration of a tired old Slashdot meme.

but I laughed at that post, you insensitive clod!

Re:Goodness me!

[PitaBred]

I think you're just jealous that you didn't think of it first

Re:Goodness me!

[noidentity]

If you don't like posts modded funny, you can have them not show up. For the rest of us who like a good laugh, we will continue to have them given extra preference.

Re:Goodness me!

[seanvaandering]

Getting the post before the second one gets the most eyeballs, including the pseudomods, and statistically speaking, will have the best chance of getting a +5 moderation, regardless of the content of the post.

I know... i've done it a few times myself.

Re:Goodness me!

[SeaFox]

...and it's such hot news!

Re:Goodness me!

[Anonymous Coward]

"today we have *shocking* news about your electricity prices"

Shit that's good, can I use that?

-- A. Coward, Senior Editor, Associated Press

Re:Goodness me!

[Anonymous Coward]

on the plus side, at least it wasn't a ten thousandth iteration of a tired old Slashdot meme. though lame jokes like this getting modded to +5 Funny is a Slashdot meme in and of itself.

You must be new here.

Re:Goodness me!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're doing it wrong

Re:Goodness me!

[tehcyder]

Mod parent -1 humourless bastard

Re:Goodness me!

[DJRumpy]

I find it funny that they modded you funny for slamming the mods for modding parent funny.

I feel like I'm stuck in an iterative funny loop...

Re:Goodness me!

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny part is that the OP is a Predator and sees in infrared as any human would have been able to see this. That or he's stupid.

Re:Goodness me!

[CubicleView]

The Anonymous Coward's post was so bad it was deemed a capital offense, ha-ha!

Re:Goodness me!

[GameMaster]

So, what you're saying is that you don't appreciate his transparent comedy?

Re:Goodness me!

[operagost]

+5, Hot grits in Soviet Russia spill Natalie Portman

Does this mean I can hide in an oven?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me in!

Re:Does this mean I can hide in an oven?

[aliquis]

Does it mean you can hide at all?

I haven't RTFA but "cloaking IR" and talking about wavelengths for me sounds rather like it absorbs any IR thrown at it (so it would look "dark" if that was all you where looking for, hence invisible) or block IR from the object to be seen (wouldn't that need cooling/heat distribution to?) but then it would still be darker then the surroundings, or?

Regardless of how it works unless the object emits the same energy waves/particles that is on the opposite side of the object for the observer it's not really invisible at all is it?

I don't see how blocking or not reflecting anything is "invisibility"?

Re:Does this mean I can hide in an oven?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

You neither block nor reflect, you cause the light to bend around you.

Imagine a smoothly-flowing stream: If you put a rock in it, the flow will be disturbed. If the rock is irregularly shaped, some of the water will "bounce" back(because this is water, and not photons, it will only cause some turbulence, not actually be reflected; but such is the weakness of analogies...). If the rock has a nice, smooth, hydrodynamic sort of shape, the water will part smoothly when it hits the rock and then come back together behind the rock, with minimal disruption to the flow. The rock exists; but for a hypothetical organism that can only detect water currents(say a water bug with sensory hairs, sitting downstream), it will be invisible.

It turns out that, on small scales, under laboratory conditions(and often only in two dimensions), with exotic materials, you can cause photons to "bend around" an object, thus rendering the object effectively invisible. They don't get absorbed, so you can't detect the object by their absence, and they don't get reflected, so you can't see the object, they just take a circuitous path around the object, and continue on their merry way as though nothing was there(though, since a semicircular path is slightly longer than the straight path would have been, I suppose a sufficiently sensitive travel-time comparison system could still detect the cloaked object...)

"halfway there" on a logarithmic scale

[Anonymous Coward]

is not halfway there

Re:"halfway there" on a logarithmic scale

[CheshireCatCO]

Yes. On a linear scale, we're basically all the way there. So what's you're point?

Seriously, log scales are the better way to measure this sort of thing, not just for convenience. Look at Moore's law.

On the other hand, I'm confused as to why we're only halfway there. Light wavelenghts aren't nanometer in size, they're hundreds of nanometers. Which means that we've gone from 1E-3 m to 1E-6 on our way to 1E-7. In log space, we're 75% of the way there.

Military

[Pharmboy]

Once you can cloak infrared, then you have a genuine military grade cloak with true stealth capability and applications. Expect most of the real breakthroughs to never see the front page of /. or any other news source. Except maybe Wikileaks.

Re:Military

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, you'll be able to hide from mosquitos!

Re:Military

[sumdumass]

Well, yea until the news headlines is "Armed robber evades police chopper by employing military technology that makes him invisible to the high tech night-vision designed to track suspects in the dark." Followed with a headline, "City counsel is to decide whether to spend 10 billion dollars or not to upgrade the aging state of the art police copters purchased not just 5 years ago" followed by the headline "schools suspend bus service in bid to save money afte the last levee failed.".

Yea, it will be buried until it's politically advantageous to someone.

Re:Military

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll certainly make Robert Redford's job much easier.

Re:Military

[Ihmhi]

I thought mosquitoes found animals by the carbon dioxide they breath out...

Re:Military

[the_other_chewey]

Except that this doesn't cloak an objects infrared emissions, it makes it invisible to surrounding IR light.
There's nothing at all hiding the infrared emissions of the object hidden by the cloak.

Unless you find a way to break a couple of thermodynamic laws, there's no real way to completely hide an
object's thermal emissions if it is warmer than its surroundings.

Re:Military

[GrumblyStuff]

You still need to put your heat somewhere. As a person, you won't radiate a whole lot of heat but anything with an engine will be pumping out hot exhaust.

Anyway, from the sound it it, they're just saying that they're working their way up the spectrum to visible light. Whether or not it works for every wavelength below infrared is another question. If it can't deal with radar, well... I guess we could have layered defense and offense lines using different cloaks.

Re:Military

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, you'll be able to hide from mosquitos!

...and Predators.

Re:Military

[twidarkling]

No, but if you could refract it, and spread it out over a larger than expected area, it could change the profile to a great enough degree for it to be useful.

Re:Military

[loki_tiwaz]

yeah, i was thinking exactly the same thing. not only does this defeat regular night vision but it would also defeat thermal imaging. and radar invisibility tho not nearly as impressive to normal nonscientific minded folks, is old hat. yes, that means microwave band. sounds to me like sonar vision is gonna have to be looked at, as is far UV. i'm sure the 'invisibility' is not perfect though, most likely along the lines of what was depicted in 'predator' where a small amount of visual distortion is visible and can be seen clearly with high motion.

isn't it wonderful for every offensive technology a defensive technology eventually arises and flattens the playing field.

Re:Military

[Pharmboy]

Unless you find a way to break a couple of thermodynamic laws, there's no real way to completely hide an
object's thermal emissions if it is warmer than its surroundings.

Not exactly true. Military jet nozzles are designed to create a smaller IR footprint, and there are several ways to reduce your thermal print. Obviously creating less heat, storing heat to prevent it from being emitted, pushing it in a direction 180 degrees away from the radar source, etc. It starts with having more imagination. The goal is NOT to make IR emissions "disappear", only to create the illusion that they have by controlling where they go. To buy time.

Sometimes, you can fool a system into thinking you are much smaller than you are, or depending on the threshold of the system, drastically increase the amount of time before you are noticed at all. Even stealth aircraft are not invisible to radar, but by the time the radar sees them, the radar site has been taken down by air to surface munitions. Same idea, only giving you a larger window before you are noticed, thus defeating better radar systems. We can already absorb and deflect microwaves fairly well, adding IR to aircraft defense would be a very big deal, for protection from radars, and from air to air and surface to air munitions. ie: Air superiority.

Re:Military

[nanospook]

*Sneering* What planet do you come from?

Re:Military

[camperdave]

Better yet, you'll be able to hide from mosquitos!

...and Predators.

Yeah. That'll work really well... until they switch to UV.

Re:Military

[sakdoctor]

A large part of the mosquito’s sense of smell, or olfactory system, is devoted to sniffing out human targets. Of 72 types of odour receptor on its antennae, at least 27 are tuned to detect chemicals found in perspiration.

So carbon dioxide, octenol and nonanal, among many others.
Also nonanal acts synergistically with carbon dioxide".

Re:Military

[jgtg32a]

Or heartbeat

Re:Military

[JumpDrive]

Except that this doesn't cloak an objects infrared emissions, it makes it invisible to surrounding IR light.

So what if you turned the cloak inside out then?



just kidding

One good purpose

[countertrolling]

For grow houses to keep the cops from snooping.

Re:One good purpose

[DarkIye]

Because a visible house with a completely transparent heat signature isn't going to raise any eyebrows.

Re:One good purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

So balance it out with heat generators matching the typical signature of a house on the roof -above- the invisibility deally. Duh?

Re:One good purpose

[Khyber]

A totally cold spot makes no sense in almost any house. If that room is showing nil IR emissions, then I'm going to assume tons of non-standard insulation is being used to hide something.

You're better off just using LED lights and reducing your heat signature. Oh, and don't grow illegally, that helps, too.

Re:One good purpose

[countertrolling]

The transparency will just have to be dynamically adjustable. If you let the right amount through it will be more effective in blending with the surroundings, otherwise it wouldn't be cloaking.

Re:One good purpose

[Khyber]

That would be nigh-impossible to do, given the set properties of any given material. Maybe a liquid filter that is adjustable could be done but then you're looking at something well beyond the reasonable expense of any grower, plus considerable complications.

Re:One good purpose

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm not sure how useful this stuff would be for that purpose. When the cops are conducting one of their we-don't-need-a-warrant-anybody-who-happened-to-be-carrying-a-10K-FLIR-scanner-down-this-public-road-could-have-seen-it... "non-searches", they aren't looking for reflected IR(that would be pointless, there is plenty of visible light around, and everybody knows where the house is), they are looking for IR emissions. Presumably, a house shielded with this stuff would react very oddly to IR light sources, bending those around it like it didn't exist; but it would behave itself like a more or less ordinary blackbody. For something as toasty as a grow-op, that would mean pumping out substantial IR from the walls and roof.

One would probably have better luck with the much lower tech(though probably pretty tricky to engineer in a way that isn't wildly suspicious) refrigeration technologies and/forced air cooling of areas immediately adjacent to exterior walls(attic particularly).

You would still need somewhere to dump the heat, I'm guessing that having enough chillers to serve a modest datacenter in your back yard would be pretty suspicious; but you could keep your walls at non-suspicious temps, and concentrate the heat output so that it could be dumped in the least suspicious place. A river would, of course, be ideal. A decent size aquifer might do as well. The air speed you would need to achieve to have a forced air cooling setup emit exhaust that doesn't trip every helicopter-mounted FLIRcam in the area would probably draw attention, so that might not work.

Re:One good purpose

[Tubal-Cain]

A totally cold spot makes no sense in almost any house.

It wouldn't appear "totally cold". It would seem empty (of heat sources), which is not the same thing.

Sigh, no

[Ancient_Hacker]

Calling these things "invisibility cloaks" is being very, very generous.

They are fundamentally flawed in the specs: percent transmission, angle, bandwidth, and refraction.

They're more of a laboratory curiosity than anything that would fool anybody.

Re:Sigh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno dude, this quote from the article sounds like it's aimed right at you.

Metamaterials work by resonating at the frequency to be cloaked, bending incident waves up around objects and then back down so that the light emerges on the other side as if unimpeded, effectively "cloaking" the object from view

That *sounds* as if it means the light just goes through them as if it weren't there, aka cloaking ala Romulans/Klingons, but your expertise in the matter is likely more than mine.

I'd like to know why a material that has the light go through as if it weren't there does not deal with the flaws of percent transmission, angle, bandwidth, and refraction.

Re:Sigh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll be like "oops I farted!" And another of those probably quite fragile things will be ruined.

Re:Sigh, no

[drew30319]

You're right but Marketing shot down the name "fundamentally flawed."

Didn't test well.

Re:Sigh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you have no idea what "bandwidth", "percent transmission", "angle", and "refraction" mean.

The so-called "invisibility cloaks" work at only one frequency (or a very narrow band of frequencies around that frequency), i.e. "bandwidth", they work only in two dimensions, i.e. "angle", and they don't perfectly transmit all the light (i.e. refraction and percent transmission).

Re:Sigh, no

[rainmouse]

They're more of a laboratory curiosity than anything that would fool anybody.

Yes but it is early days. Technology always starts out a bit crap, I mean your PC sure has come a long way from valves and punch cards.

Re:Sigh, no

[JasterBobaMereel]

If it hides you when people are not really looking carefully then you are invisible

If when you are advancing towards a target it hides you for 30 seconds, then you are 30 seconds nearer than someone without it ... ...depends on your definition of fundamentally flawed

Re:Sigh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but it is early days. Technology always starts out a bit crap, I mean your PC sure has come a long way from valves and punch cards.

Good point! All successful technology had humble beginnings, so all humble beginnings must by necessity lead to successful technology.

Thanks, Slashdot! You never fail to educate us.

I can see the headline...

[tiedyejeremy]

but can't see the story. What gives?

Re:I can see the headline...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you try reloading?

Wait...does this mean

[ShooterNeo]

Does this really mean that visible light invisibility shielding is actually possible? Over the years, whenever I saw an article on this, I just yawned and assumed that the laws of physics wouldn't really allow someone to make a real device that could not be detected by some wavelengths of light.

However, I'm going to assume that a practical real world application of the technology will require another tech called 'molecular manufacturing' as a prerequisite. I'm guessing that to cloak a macroscopic object from visible light you'll need to create a shield with atomic level precision. And forget cloaking a person, probably - a shield would need to be a rigid object and there's probably an upper limit to how large it could be. I'm thinking that the insect sized spy drones of the future could be made totally invisible to the naked eye, however.

Re:Wait...does this mean

[hedwards]

Of course it's possible, it's just a question of whether or not we're ever able to do it effectively. For something to be invisible, you have to have the photons divert around it then converge at the other end as if they hadn't just diverted. That would make something invisible, the practice however is not easy by any reasonable stretch of the imagination.

Re:Wait...does this mean

[Anonymous Coward]

Great way to end a sentence, however.

Re:Wait...does this mean

[RsG]

Infrared also poses additional problems above and beyond what you've stated, because the light isn't coming from an external source.

Any hot object is going to radiate infrared radiation. That isn't something external being reflected off of it, that's coming from the surface of the radiating object itself. Infrared sensors work on contrast, so if you've got, say, a skin temperature object like a human being in a room temperature environment, it'll show up. Same applies for a room temperature object in an arctic environment - what matters is contrasting temperatures between the object to hide and the world around it.

So how do you mask this? Okay, you keep the infrared from escaping. Totally stopping it is impossible, but reducing it isn't, and "good enough" if it's reduced to the point where it no longer contrasts with its surroundings. Thing is, radiating heat is one of the ways internally heated objects (like human bodies) cool down, so depending on a number of factors, overheating will be an issue.

But you can lose heat in other ways. Conduction and convection dissipate more heat than radiation, at least in a terrestrial environment (space is another story). Except that the medium you're dumping heat into will itself heat up and start radiating in the IR spectrum, just like your hidden whatever would have. So you've mitigated the problem, but not eliminated it.

Now an important thing to note is that all of this applies to complete invisibility to IR. Partial stealth is another matter. Mitigating the problem is good enough if the intent is to make the job of whoever is looking for you harder. Stealth aircraft aren't invisible either, but are stealthy enough to give them an edge over the competition. OTOH, this pretty much kills any chance of making a Star Trek style cloaking device, especially if you want it to work in space.

Re:Wait...does this mean

[Antidamage]

You're talking about thermal imaging. That's not how IR used for night-vision works. Your IR remote control doesn't shoot a jet of warmth at the TV. It's just a spectrum of light slightly outside of what we see.

Actual IR cameras work so well for finding people because of what's REFLECTING the IR light. Synthetic materials reflect differently to the sorts of things you find in the wild. Additionally IR is useful for marking friendlies in such a way that people without IR gear can't see.

Modern night-vision goggles use a combination of low-light sensitive cameras, IR imagery and image processing to enhance the image. I'm not actually sure if you'll find thermal imaging in use at all for combat situations.

Keeping that in mind, because the images are often of such low quality the concept of bending light around an object- even with large distortion errors - works very well. You're merely adapting the entire cloak to suit the surrounds, which is exactly what modern techniques for hiding from IR cams involves, except you disguise yourself with the surrounding foliage/debris/whatever. Same materials, same colour, same IR reflectivity. Fooling our eyes in daylight is going to be a little harder.

Re:Wait...does this mean

[hedwards]

They were trying to use it in Afghanistan, but it wasn't really working very well. Mainly because of the caves. Ultimately it proved less useful than good old fashioned snitches.

Mythical stuff

[hhedeshian]

Didn't they do this on Mythbusters?

Re:Mythical stuff

[Culture20]

Yes, sneaking past an infrared security camera.

Re:Mythical stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, anywhere that has infared sensors probably also has regular cameras too...

Headline parsing

[tux0r]

Glass Invisibility Cloak Shields Infrared

You know you've been coding too much when the brain reads that as "noun noun noun noun noun" and throws a parse error expecting a verb...

Re:Headline parsing

[blackraven14250]

You're an idiot. "Shields" is a present tense of the verb form of shield.

Re:Headline parsing

[Anonymous Coward]

Glass Invisibility Cloak Shields Infrared

You know you've been coding too much when the brain reads that as "noun noun noun noun noun" and throws a parse error expecting a verb...

You know you've been reading too much Lolcats when you first read that response as "nom nom nom nom nom"

Re:Headline parsing

[Anonymous Coward]

To shield

Re:Headline parsing

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

Or not to shield, that is the question

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
the slings and arrows of outrageous fortunes
or take arms against a sea of photons
and by opposing, evade them?

Finally!

[matunos]

When the Predators invade, we'll be ready!

Re:Finally!

[Flowstone]

Unless they switch to another vision mode. then your just as screwed as you were to being with.

This can bypass infrared security systems?

[Joe The Dragon]

This can bypass infrared security systems?

Re:This can bypass infrared security systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

a bed sheet over you can bypass infrared security systems

Invisibility cloak underwear for TSA screening?

[davidwr]

TSA screener: "nothing for me to see here, move her right along"

Re:Invisibility cloak underwear for TSA screening?

[mpoulton]

Aluminum foil, or fine metal mesh. The technology already exists!

not really

[zogger]

Anyone using infra red detection goggles/devices will see a very unusual cool spot that stands out against the background (try out some first or second gen goggles some time). And it will be especially noticeable if this cool spot is moving. Good milspec devices like this, to be really stealthy, would detect and measure the surrounding background heat levels and *match them*, like a chameleon matches background visual colors.

Re:not really

[hakey]

measure the surrounding background heat levels and *match them*, like a chameleon matches background visual colors

How invisibility cloaks work http://www.howstuffworks.com/invisibility-cloak.htm

Re:not really

[flowwolf]

There is no absorption of infrared. The waves are carried around the surface, reflect off what's behind it, and are then carried back around the surface again. Aberrations may be generated by the process, though it would be very convincing to the untrained mind that there was nothing there.

Another application

[Anonymous Coward]

Wen I was reading about this technologies I was thinking in the solar panels and if it possible to use this development to make more efficient or cheap solar panels. One idea is to use this cloak technology to trap more light for the solar panel or to make a new type of solar panel trapping all the light energy an the using and alkali metal thermoelectric converter to generate electricity.

Thermal protection

[La Gris]

I know it is premature speculation on lab technologies but, well Infra-reds invisibility could mean improved heat isolating glasses windows for buildings. Keep visible light enter the building, let infra-reds refract though the other side and keep inside radiating heat bouncing the glass with perfect reflection. Would be a boon for vehicles where most windows face side to side. Would this be more efficient or combinable with athermic design?

No: not really

[Required Snark]

If this can be made to work at the frequencies used by infrared targeting sensors it could be extremely useful. It doesn't have to 'match' anything. All it has to do is make the platform not emit in the expected direction, but in a direction that will make tracking difficult. Remember that these kind of meta-materials have a negative index of reflection, so they can act like unusual lenses. It doesn't even have to do this for the entire vehicle, just the hot parts used for targeting. For example, this could be a big winner for UAV platforms.

i for one thank our tcpip overlords

[Anonymous Coward]

i for one thank our tcpip overlords.

Re:I want to be Hillary's Monica Lewinski

[Ex-MislTech]

Hillary's monica is right here:

http://www.justout.com/ptArchive/blog/default.aspx?id=3882&t=Right-Wing-Conspiracy-Continued

One hot lady from the land o' sand.

wha?

[buddyglass]

No 'predator' tag?

I'm talking about the garage type with a beam?

[Joe The Dragon]

I'm talking about the garage type with a beam?

Re:I'm talking about the garage type with a beam?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm talking about the garage type with a beam?

Yes.

Go watch Mythbusters, they did a couple episodes on security systems.

what's that again?

[martyb]

Ok, I'm not up on materials science and had to look this up--thought others might be curious, too: chalcogenide glass

Now that's out of the way...

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

Science needs to get working on my Gauntlets of Ogre Power.

chalcogenide glass, toxic and unstable

[Anonymous Coward]

chalcogenide glass has some serious limitations from what ive heard from researchers. it has been hyped as it has a very high refractive index and nonlinearity, but the limitations are rarely mentioned.

I believe that it is unstable and any optical device made from it would not last more than months possibly depending on its environment, this is because its optical properties change over time. perhaps devices can compensate for this but it may only be useful in the laboratory for empirically determining/verifying the basic physics rather than for use in optical computing let alone military 'invisibility shielding'.

another problem is the toxicity. selenium chalcogenides are generally the ones ive seen used in photonics applications, and this element is extremely toxic. you do not want a military structure that will be shot at to be surrounded with selenium glass.

Re:chalcogenide glass, toxic and unstable

[Dunbal]

The only way this will work to evade military grade infra red detection is if 1) you are not moving - people tend to notice a "cold patch" moving against a background - it's almost as good as a hot one; and 2)if you can manage to match the background heat exactly, thus masking your shape. Unfortunately if you're being viewed by something that's moving (like a helicopter or drone), you have no idea at what angle you are being viewed from at any point in time. This complicates matters.

Re:chalcogenide glass, toxic and unstable

[Anonymous Coward]

when you start at 0 its pretty difficult to casually post informative content

Re:chalcogenide glass, toxic and unstable

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the whole purpose of this is to route light around the shape, there would be no cold patch to see.

The background infrared from any direction would simply flow around you like water around a rock in a stream.

So long as you could absorb/dump your own infrared heat to avoid emitting, there'd be no real problem of angle.

Assuming of course this was fully developed.

I have to ask..

[nanospook]

Where does the heat go?

Maybe this explains where all the girls went

[zaffir]

MTU is a lonely, lonely place...

Question with obtuse reference

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this where one is supposed to inquire whether it works for Christians, or for pagans and vikings?

so its like a reverse predator

[circletimessquare]

you can't see a predator, but he shows up on infrared

with this tech, you don't show up on infrared, but you can still be seen

maybe this tech will finally allow for a lasting peace with the predator alien race via mutual incomprehension

Re:so its like a reverse predator

[Anonymous Coward]

Or via cross-licensing?

hollow glass tubes...

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean like panda bear fur? Also invisible to infrared...

what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was pretty sure the glass just plain blocked infrared light normally? When a camera was demonstrated to me nearly 10~ years ago they mentioned this was a major limitation when they would use it.

Knew that already

[Drakkenmensch]

Didn't the mythbusters already prove you can foil a heat-sensing alarm by holding a pane of glass in front of you?

This thread is useless without.....

[Minze_ZR]

Actual pictures.... oh.... wait, Invisibility Cloak.. Nothing to see here, move along...

i wonder..

[Anonymous Coward]

could this be used by indoor pot growers to shield from the po-po's infrared equiped helicopters.
-annonamous for no particular reason.

Re:i wonder..

[afxgrin]

Just switch to LED grow lamps already.

Sweet

[Xacid]

Now we're set in case of Predator attack.

Elastic cloaking

[SoVeryTired]

Cloaking uses metamaterials which have a negative refractive index- these bend light rays around the object being cloaked. Very recently, physicists and engineers realised that a similar principle can be applied to pressure waves caused by earthquakes. With the right design, the shockwaves might be bent around a building, rendering it "invisible" to an earthquake.

This was previously thought impossible due to mistakes in some engineering research articles.
Link here:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090720105125.htm

More techncial articles can be found by googling "elastic cloaking".