Scientists creating an invisibility cloak!

[Wingweaver_The_Vampire]

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...ity-cloak.html

A team of British and U.S. scientists has demonstrated the first working "invisibility cloak," although don’t expect it to appear in the Halloween costumes aisle just yet. The team, led by Professor Sir John Pendry of Imperial College in London, built the prototype at Duke University in North Carolina and reported its findings Thursday in Science Express, the advance online publication of the journal Science.

Little more than 12 centimetres across, the small device can redirect microwave beams so they flow around a "hidden" object inside with little distortion, making it appear almost as if nothing were there at all.

Like light, microwaves bounce off objects, making them visible and creating a "shadow," although it has to be detected with instruments.

The new work could be a baby step to an improved version that would make the Klingons and Harry Potter jealous by hiding people and objects from visible light.

Like 'water flowing around a smooth rock'

In the experiment, the scientists used microwaves to try to detect a copper cylinder "hidden" by the cloak, which is made from metamaterials — or engineered mixtures of metal and circuit board materials, which could include ceramic, Teflon or fibre composite materials.

"The waves' movement is similar to river water flowing around a smooth rock,” said cloak designer David Schurig, a research associate in Duke's electrical and computer engineering department.

The test came five months after the team published a theory that such a device was possible to design.

"By incorporating complex material properties, our cloak allows a concealed volume, plus the cloak, to appear to have properties similar to free space when viewed externally," said David Smith, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke, in a release Thursday.

"The cloak reduces both an object's reflection and its shadow, either of which would enable its detection."

Wireless, radar applications

Cloaking differs from stealth technology, which doesn't make an aircraft invisible but reduces the cross-section available to radar, making it hard to track. Cloaking simply passes the radar or other waves around the object as if it weren't there.

Cloaks that render objects essentially invisible to microwaves could have a variety of wireless communications or radar applications, the researchers said.

The scientists said their cloak represents the most comprehensive approach to invisibility yet realized, with the potential to hide objects of any size or material property.

Earlier scientific approaches to achieving "invisibility" often relied on limiting the reflection of electromagnetic waves, they added.

That's something... It was on msn news 4 days ago...

[CptSternn]

I saw that. Looks cool.

[HumanePain]

I went to the SPIE convention last year in San Diego and this was discussed; it is using mathematics that predicted this possibility ten years ago, but is just now approaching practical application. Now if I can just get a microwave invisibility cloak for my car I can avoid more speeding tickets.

[Geoluhread]

http://www.unexplainable.net/artman/...icle_776.shtml


And this was when? 1990?

[HumanePain]

Interesting article but it fails to mention negative refractive index, which would be required to achieve the wrap around attribute of the microwave version in the OP.

An interesting mix of technologies to accomplish invisibility is nanotechnology and optics. In the December 2005 abstract published in the Optical Society of America (OSA) Optics Letters, scientists describe using nanorods that are smaller than light wavelengths, enabling them to affect the reflection of light with a negative refractive index:

http://ol.osa.org/abstract.cfm?uri=ol-30-24-3356

(Drs. V. M. Shalaev, W. Cai, U. K. Chettiar, H. Yuan, A. K. Sarychev, V. P. Drachev, and A. V. Kildishev)

[Raptor]

I think you were telling me about this around a month ago. Awesome that it has been done.

[ThreeEyesOni]

Not realy an invisibility cloak, just a next step in stealth (aka: stealth bombers) technology.

There's a japanese guy who's working on an optical version. It basically looks like a poncho, and creates a blurring effect similar to the Predator movies. There have been a few military tests done on it, but no field tests to my knowledge.

[Sir_Vex]

Originally Posted by ThreeEyesOni

Not realy an invisibility cloak, just a next step in stealth (aka: stealth bombers) technology.

There's a japanese guy who's working on an optical version. It basically looks like a poncho, and creates a blurring effect similar to the Predator movies. There have been a few military tests done on it, but no field tests to my knowledge.

I once knew someone who could explain to me the theories of the Predator "stealth" device. I didn't see the movie, but his ideas were interesting and seemed to make sense.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time though before this is applied to military tactics and techniques. I wonder though if they'd actually tell us that they were using "stealth" technology like this?

[HumanePain]

Originally Posted by Sir_Vex

I once knew someone who could explain to me the theories of the Predator "stealth" device. I didn't see the movie, but his ideas were interesting and seemed to make sense.

So you choose not to research it for yourself and believe what someone else says? This shows lethargy and laziness, which are unacceptable traits of character.

[gothicusmaximus]

Originally Posted by HumanePain

So you choose not to research it for yourself and believe what someone else says? This shows lethargy and laziness, which are unacceptable traits of character.

Maybe, although he found his friend's ideas interesting, he just didn't care quite enough about THEORETICAL PHYSICS BASED ON SCI-FI ACTION MOVIES STARRING ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER to research the subject independently, which attitude is perfectly acceptable in my view.

[ThreeEyesOni]

Originally Posted by Sir_Vex

I once knew someone who could explain to me the theories of the Predator "stealth" device. I didn't see the movie, but his ideas were interesting and seemed to make sense.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time though before this is applied to military tactics and techniques. I wonder though if they'd actually tell us that they were using "stealth" technology like this?

There are more than a few possibilities for the movie-tech, but the real-world version is basically a poncho made of a dual sensory/display material (basically a bunch of horribly complicated technology that is about as fragile as Wil Wheaton's ego) that basically just uses sensors on one side to display on the exact opposite side what you should see from that angle. It's not precise, but if you are looking directly at the individual you're going to have a hard time seeing them dependent on the background; the military test had a photo of soldiers in the cloak in the middle of tall grass and damned if you would see them without knowing where and what to look for.

[Unimatrix 00]

check this out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKPVQal851U

And it's actually not photoshop or anything, I saw it on TV once.

[Godslayer Jillian]

What I don't understand is why does his face not project in the sphere.

[Kristin]

It's soo Artemis Fowl!

[Renatus]

I wonder what it would be like if everyone was wearing invisibility cloaks. Would people die more due to accidents because you won't be able to avoid it: Yesterday at 2 pm neighbor A was revving up a chainsaw and ran it right into invisible neighbor B. Or would it save more lives: Today in Iraq nothing happened, no one on either side managed to locate each other, Americans are now beginning to question if there is still even an American military, and if so where are they? Reminds me of this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4nknAzQPHE

[Sir_Vex]

Originally Posted by gothicusmaximus

Maybe, although he found his friend's ideas interesting, he just didn't care quite enough about THEORETICAL PHYSICS BASED ON SCI-FI ACTION MOVIES STARRING ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER to research the subject independently, which attitude is perfectly acceptable in my view.

Thank you. This is exactly why I didn't look into it, which is for the same reason I never decided to look into how anti-matter fuels the warp drive in Star Trek.

[Sir_Vex]

Originally Posted by ThreeEyesOni

There are more than a few possibilities for the movie-tech, but the real-world version is basically a poncho made of a dual sensory/display material (basically a bunch of horribly complicated technology that is about as fragile as Wil Wheaton's ego) that basically just uses sensors on one side to display on the exact opposite side what you should see from that angle. It's not precise, but if you are looking directly at the individual you're going to have a hard time seeing them dependent on the background; the military test had a photo of soldiers in the cloak in the middle of tall grass and damned if you would see them without knowing where and what to look for.

Do we know if it's actually being used in the field yet in the slightest? It seems to me it could be used to hide guards or sentry units as long as they remained in the same spot or still.

[metum_capere]

awesome! where do i sign up?
not sure about microwaving myself however..