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Posted on 02/28/2005 6:36:25 PM PST by AntiGuv
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stealth ping!
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Like a frightened turtle!
Pendry warns, however, that the concept as it stands is "no magic cloak", because it would have to be delicately tuned to suit each different object it hides. Perhaps even more of a drawback, he points out, is the fact that a particular shield only works for one specific wavelength of light.An object might be made invisible in red light, say, but not in multiwavelength daylight.
And crucially, the effect only works when the wavelength of the light being scattered is roughly the same size as the object. So shielding from visible light would be possible only for microscopic objects; larger ones could be hidden only to long-wavelength radiation such as microwaves. This means that the technology could not be used to hide people or vehicles from human vision.
But that need not undermine other potential uses, Engheta says. For example, the effect could be useful for making antiglare materials.
Another possible use for plasmonic screening is microscopy, he adds. Light microscopes could surpass their usual resolution limits by using tiny probes to measure the light field very close to the object being imaged. Such probes could be made 'invisible' so that they don't disturb the imaging signal.
And of course the shielding would work fine for concealing large objects such as spaceships from sensors or telescopes that used long-wavelength radiation instead of visible light.
This is no big deal. Heck , old age has done this to me.
It's certainly true that this initial concept provides for very limited applications, but it may represent an entry to more spectacular results.
More importantly, the mere prospect of long range cloaking has some very interesting implications with respect to the Fermi Paradox!
Old news.
Er, coating expensive things with gold or silver does NOT make them invisible to thieves.......
(It just makes what the thieves stole harder to find.)
Dang, now more people probably will get an Aston Martin like the one on the James Bond movie that I purchased off Ebay...
Huh. I'll believe it when I see it!
Heck, my car keys are invisible most mornings....
Can't we just get Kirk to steal one from the Romulans?
Japanese scientist invents 'invisibility cloak'
A Japanese scientist has developed a coat which appears to make the wearer invisible.
The illusion was part of a demonstration of optical camouflage technology at Tokyo University.
It is the brainchild of Professor Susumu Tachi who is in the early stage of research he hopes will eventually make camouflaged objects virtually transparent.
The photograph was taken through a viewfinder that uses a combination of moving images taken behind the wearer to give a transparent effect.
It's hoped the technology will be useful for surgeons frustrated their own hands and surgical tools can block their view of operations and pilots who wish cockpit floors were transparent for landings.
Thanks, I remember that post.
Just because something fails to reflect light doesn't render it invisible. The sub-chasing airplanes in WWII were easily spotted by noticing the black object blanking out stars. The solved the problem by mounting a downward shining spotlight on the bottom of the planes.
Thanks for the ping!
That leaped out at me from the Nature article. But I think they'd really need a method to cloak their communications, because it's not their ships we're looking for. They'd need to cloak all other evidence of their existence too. I doubt that there are entire colonies of ... them ... living on earth, or on the moon, all cloaked. Not unless they're the size of anthills.
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