Special materials could make light "flow" around an object like water.
Posted on 06/04/2006 3:07:55 PM PDT by Panerai
Researchers in the US and Britain have unveiled their blueprints for building a cloaking device.
So far, cloaking has been confined to science fiction; in Star Trek it is used to render spacecraft invisible.
Professor Sir John Pendry says a simple demonstration model that could work for radar might be possible within 18 months' time.
In the journal Science two separate teams, including Professor Pendry's, have outlined ways to cloak objects .
These research papers present the maths required to verify that the concept could work. But developing an invisibility cloak is likely to pose significant challenges.
Both groups propose methods using the unusual properties of so-called "metamaterials" to build a cloak.
These metamaterials can be designed to induce a desired change in the direction of electromagnetic waves, such as light. This is done by tinkering with the nano-scale structure of the metamaterial, not by altering its chemistry.
Light flow
John Pendry's team suggest that by enveloping an object in a metamaterial cloak, light waves can be made to flow around the object in the same way that water would do so.
"Water behaves a little differently to light. If you put a pencil in water that's moving, the water naturally flows around the pencil. When it gets to the other side, the water closes up," Professor Pendry told the BBC.
"A little way downstream, you'd never know that you'd put a pencil in the water - it's flowing smoothly again.
"Light doesn't do that of course, it hits the pencil and scatters. So you want to put a coating around the pencil that allows light to flow around it like water, in a nice, curved way."
The work provides a mathematical "recipe" for bending light waves in such a way as to achieve a desired cloaking effect.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Special materials could make light "flow" around an object like water.
More evidence that William Shatner created the modern world. Gaa...
what special materials?
That movie would have ended a lot earlier if the Predator did not have his cloaking device!
Is it "science fiction" Or "science Premonition"?
UFO occupants are going to be a little surprised when our f22's decloak behind them in time to blow them out of the sky....heh heh just kidding(I think....!?)
If you were inside a cloaked object, how could you see out?
If you stuck your head (or a camera) out, that'd give you away. And you'd have to stick your head considerably far outside the cloaking device since light flowing near it will be so badly distorted.
OTOH, if you allowed some light to pass inside the cloaked object (so the occupant or occupants could see what was going on around them), then outside observers will see a darkened smudge (sort of like the movie), as not all the light that normally would've reached their eye will get to them.
In other words, it may be possible, but it won't be perfect. More like the ultimate camouflage than real invisibility. Still, it'll be the coolest thing ever invented, if you ask me!
LOL! I guess that cloaking device is still in beta testing.
Nothing is perfect, but I prefer our side always has a slight advantage!
The bad news is it only runs on cold fusion power.
that is still cracking me up....
Stole it in the original series. Given use of one [with a Romulan officer] for a mission in the "Next Generation". Allied with the Klingons [who got them from the Romulans] in NG and DS 9. Yet they never build their own, or get one from somebody. Asinine.
On Tek, it ran on hot air and chewed up scenery. That's why they had Shatner steal it.
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