Posted on 07/19/2009 9:08:54 PM PDT by JoeProBono
It would have many uses including military applications, radar tracking: A universal mirror, an object that reflects all light waves back at their source, has been created by scientists in Europe and Asia. Imagine a tennis player hitting a ball against a wall. The ball would bounce right back to the player no matter what angle he or she directed the shot.
A universal mirror has the same effect, except with light waves. Unlike an ordinary mirror, which only reflects objects at 90 degrees, a universal mirror reflects objects back at any angle. In other words, a person positioned in front of a large, optical universal mirror would see his or her own reflection perfectly no matter where the person stands.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
I don’t know whos bathroom that is. but they sure keep alot of beer in their bathtub.
Very interesting. I remember a time when this kind of research would have come out of an American University. But of course our taxpayer money (greatest contribution the poor make to the upper classes is support of universities — whose annual budgets grow at a greater rate than healthcare — but what the heck — ) is now supporting the education of “community organizers” majoring in “ethnic studies” or “womens studies” or “socialization of [other peoples’] children, who would not deign to sully themselves with actually taking part in the despised world of commerce or engineering (unless its huts for the proles).
I wonder if Avril has ever moved past the angry mirror-punching stage.
“So, could you like put one on a ceiling?
parsy, who is thinking of engineering applications”
Man, you crack me up!
LOL
I’m trying to decide how this differs from a phase conjugate mirror.
Yes, what they describe sounds like a phase conjugate mirror. A PCM doesn’t simply reflect light, it turns the wavefront back on itself. The result is that any distortions in the wavefront are undone as they pass back through the the distorting medium. Or, in the case of spherical waves leaving a point source, the waves re-converge back to their source.
Just keep these suckers out of department store dressing rooms. Nobody I know wants an enhanced view.
In flight test they have had these type of mirrors for years. Except they have been on a macro scale. Light hits the mirror and always goes back to the source. Corner Cube Reflectors (CCR). I suppose what makes this mirror different is that the corner cube reflection is happening on almost a molecular level.
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