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| Science |
| Invisibility cloak within our grasp |
| 2007-04-07 |
| HARRY Potter fans take note: scientists in the US have finally come up with a workable design for an invisibility cloak. Physicists figured out the complex mathematical equations for making objects invisible by bending light around them last year. Now a group of engineers at Purdue University in Indiana has used those calculations to design a relatively simple device that may one day be able to make objects as big as a plane disappear. The design calls for tiny metal needles to be fitted into a cone like a hairbrush, at angles and lengths that would force light to pass around it. This would make everything inside the cone appear to vanish because the light would no longer reflect off it. "It looks pretty much like fiction, I do realise, but it's completely in agreement with the laws of physics," said lead researcher Vladimir Shalaev, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue. "Ideally, if we make it real it would work exactly like Harry Potter's invisibility cloak," he said. "It's not going to be heavy because there's going to be very little metal in it." The still-theoretical design will be published this month in the journal Nature Photonics. Prof Shaleav said he needed to secure The major limitation is that the current design can only bend the light of a single wave-length at a time, and does not work with the entire frequency range of the visible spectrum. "How to create a design that works for all colours of visible light at the same time will be a big technical challenge, but we believe it's possible," Prof Shalaev said. "In principal [sic] it's do-able." Even blocking a single frequency could lead to useful applications, Prof Shaleav said. The cloak could shield soldiers from night-vision goggles which use only one wavelength of light. It could also be used to hide objects from "laser designators" used by the military to illuminate a target, he said. |
| Posted by:zazz |
| #8 An illusive appearance that is so irritating to the mind that the mind ignores it You mean like Pelosi's arrogation of foreign policy making? |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-04-07 21:54 |
| #7 Their approach is interesting, but will never be very satisfactory, because it is attempting to fool our eyes, which are finely attuned to look for discrepancies. They would have more luck ignoring the eyes and trying to deceive the brain. That is, there are some illusions that bypass the eyes and take place in the brain. A "color wheel" is one such: A white disk with black markings is spun, and at a particular speed, it creates the illusion of color directly in the brain. They know this, because even people who are completely color blind can still see colors with a color wheel, which as you can imagine, they find utterly hypnotic. There are three things the brain can do when it perceives such a thing: it can either intently focus on it; or it can rationalize it away with illusion, such as color; or it can totally ignore it--a mental "blind spot". And this is the desired effect. An illusive appearance that is so irritating to the mind that the mind ignores it--and thus you are de facto invisible. If perfected, literally a person could be looking right at you and see everything around you, but not see you. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-04-07 20:49 |
| #6 Great; call me back when they have shields and photon torpedoes... |
| Posted by: Raj 2007-04-07 13:32 |
| #5 And here I was, thinking that someone had finally succeeded in harnessing the liberal left's ability to ignore Islam's terrorist threat. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-04-07 12:45 |
| #4 You want to fuck with their minds? Project flying pigs, that'l do it. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2007-04-07 11:04 |
| #3 I'm afraid Grunter's right, this is strictly lab fantasy, better to mirror polish your airplane, then it'll reflect the sky around it. Not exactly invisible, but close. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2007-04-07 11:02 |
| #2 Grunter, that was cheesy. Anybody got a story about projecting holograms to the enemy? Cool stuff I hear. Imagine the ways you could really mind-F the enemy by projecting flying ham sandwiches splattering themselves on Korans... |
| Posted by: covertfloridian 2007-04-07 10:08 |
| #1 I can't see it happening. |
| Posted by: Grunter 2007-04-07 09:05 |