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Glass Invisibility Cloak Shields Infrared

Posted by kdawson on from the moving-on-up dept.

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...'"

11 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Goodness me! by Fluffeh · · Score: 5, Funny

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

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    1. Re:Goodness me! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

    2. Re:Goodness me! by tenex · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  2. Military by Pharmboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    1. Re:Military by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    2. Re:Military by the_other_chewey · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  3. Sigh, no by Ancient_Hacker · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  4. I can see the headline... by tiedyejeremy · · Score: 4, Funny

    but can't see the story. What gives?

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  5. Headline parsing by tux0r · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...

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    1. Re:Headline parsing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      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"

    2. Re:Headline parsing by suomynonAyletamitlU · · Score: 4, Funny

      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?