Scientists Make Item Invisible to Microwaves 219
Vicissidude writes "A team of American and British researchers has made a cloak of invisibility. In their experiment the scientists used microwaves to try and detect a copper cylinder. Like light and radar waves, microwaves bounce off objects making them visible and creating a shadow, though it has to be detected with instruments. If you can hide something from microwaves, you can hide it from radar and visible light. In effect the device, made of metamaterials — engineered mixtures of metal and circuit board materials, which could include ceramic, Teflon or fiber composite materials — channels the microwaves around the object being hidden. When water flows around a rock, co-author David R. Smith explained, the water recombines after it passes the rock and people looking at the water downstream would never know it had passed a rock. The first working cloak was in only two dimensions and did cast a small shadow, Smith acknowledged. The next step is to go for three dimensions and to eliminate any shadow."
Just talking... (Score:2, Interesting)
Quite some time. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Quite some time. (Score:3, Interesting)
How long till we see military issue suits? They wouldn't have to be perfect to be a big help to infantry in medium cover terrain.
Of course, almost anything military gets a civilian version eventually, so we're back where I started.
Backpack of Invisibility? (Score:5, Interesting)
Could a "gravity cloak" create subspaces operating as independent universes? Could we contain matter too highly interactive for current use safely? Like a tiny black hole conveniently near a device it's powering, or a pair coupled into a wormhole for "faster than light" travel through custom-folded space? Vast amounts of stuff crammed into pocketsized spaces.
Maybe the old playground philosphers choosing between "teleportation or invisibility superpowers" will finally have a lab to figure out which is really better.
There are a lot of naysayers around here . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, I know - this won't do that much against baryonic radiation, but for e/m . . .
Re:Quite some time. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, they won't get them right away. But you better believe that they'll try to capture them, and any state sponsors that they have immediately try and produce or otherwise acquire them. Big armies, trying to cloak things like tanks driving down the stret, will have a much harder job at it than fighters simply hiding themselves and their RPG, already in the shadows or buildings. Not to mention things like pressure or vibration-triggered mines/IEDs won't be affected, which also benefits guerilla fighters on their own turf.
Actual invisibility is useless (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Quite some time. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:hmm, (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Fermat's principle (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Quite some time. (Score:2, Interesting)
Imagine cloaking thousands of giant baloons and floating them over your city... In come the bombers, and whoops there is another baloon in the air intake, there goes a $2 billion bomber for the price of a $45 baloon!
Re:Quite some time. (Score:3, Interesting)