Is "Cloaking Technology" just around the corner? http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-05/du-tbf052406.php
Yea, the military will soon have stealth bombers that are not only invisible to radar, but will be invisible to eyesight as well. Wonder how the technology will trickle down to commercial applications? Where it would be most useful?
cloaking is just around in nowhere. Even though you can make something look like nothing was there in visible light doesnt mean it cannot be detected by other ways...say gas traces.
I don't think the article has enough information to judge whether or not cloaking is "just around the corner" or not. The article doesn't say much of anything other than "cloaking is just around the corner". There are no specifics, there is nothing to base any judgement call on. It might as well been one of the crackpots here saying the same thing. I reserve judgement and abstain from voting.
I decided to take the non-scientific leap of faith, and vote "Yes- cloaking will be achieved" ........but there are a couple of things that make me a skeptic: Assuming a military found a way to create invisible camoflage, why in the hell would they tell anybody about it at all? Invisibility is a HUGE tactical advantage, and would be 1000 times more effective if the enemy (and the public) didn't know it existed. Not only that, but it wouldn't be hard to convince people that it DIDN'T exist if you really had the capability to do it. There is also the fact that you wouldn't want to give people an early opportunity to make countermeasures for it. The fact that there is public info on it makes me wonder.
The article said the research was "supported by" DARPA, it didn't say it was a government contract. It further said tehre were no practical breakthroughs at all. Duke University would LOVE the publicity of "dicovering" this, if there is actually anything to be discovered. It seems, at this point, that it is nothing but purely speculation. There IS nothing to hide. Not yet, anyway. Perhaps, DARPA just got involved in the project funding further research on this initial speculative work, and they will be under a gag order once the real research actually starts.
There's no time scale on the poll. It would be silly to say that cloaking will never be achieved. But on the other hand, there's no indication it will happen any time soon.
There is more information on Dr. Smith's webpage. It seems they have used theory to determine what electric and magnetic properties they need in a material to 'warp' or curve the electromagnetic propagation of light around the material. Dr. Smith seems to believe these properties can be achieved with nano-structures or micro-structures. The 'invisibility' will be limited to specific wavelengths at first. A link: http://www.ee.duke.edu/~drsmith/cloaking.html
http://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/0,70997-0.html?tw=wn_index_17 Such a cloak does not exist, but early versions that could mask microwaves and other forms of electromagnetic radiation could be as close as 18 months away, Pendry said. He said the study was "an invitation to come and play with these new ideas." Or in Japan. http://science.howstuffworks.com/invisibility-cloak.htm http://www.ee.duke.edu/~drsmith/cloaking.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3791795.stm http://www.mb.com.ph/issues/2004/07/12/TECH2004071213917.html http://www.hightex2005.com/smart_textiles.htm
Electronic invisibility has already been accomplished. Not by the military, although they may well have it in their tight grip now. It was in Scientific American magazine a very few years ago.
- Hiding stuff we don't want to see, I suppose. Good: hiding buildings and stuff blocking the view. Bad: Hiding surveillance cameras and criminals. It will probably require a lisence.
Electronic invisibility is when you take a electric cable, plug it in, then cut with the scissors the end of the cord and hold the wire close to yourself as you slowly get electricuted and turn into ash...the ash then gets carried away by the wind...and voila electronic invisibility...you finally become invisible
I read that article and it was all speculative (and nothing to do with the proposed technology discussed in this article).
You are correct, one_raven. There seems to be three types of technology under the broad classification. This one discussed by Dr. Smith was the one that interested me, but the details are sparse. The 'invisibility cloak' often displayed is a type of camoflage. It relies on 'collecting' information from behind the cloak, like a video camera does, and then projecting the image on the front inside surface of the 'cloak'. Computers, electronics, and a specific viewing location is necessary for the camoflage to work, to make an object seem transparent. The next type of technology was the use of things called phonons, or something like that. I have not seen it demonstrated, but the theory was that 'phonons' could be created that would resonate at the same frequency of an EM wave that hits them, effectively cancelling out any reflection or dispersion of the wave or light. I don't understand how one could 'see through' such an object, it just would not be reflecting a certain frequency of light that fell on it. Would it not still block out the background? This last theory by Dr. Smith was the one that drew my interest, not really because of the 'invisibility' factor, but because of the way it is supposed to be achieved. The details are sparse, but he seems to be stating that EM waves can be curved around an object, allowing one to see behind the object without seeing the object itself. It is similar to the way gravity bends light, but with no gravity necessary. He is using a hypothetical material, which he believes can be artifically manufactered, to cause a 'void' to open up in the ether. That is in concert with my little hypothesis that the 'ether' is separate from a gravitational field, but the ether field is attracted to and increased in density by gravity. In my hypothesis, EM waves travel through the ether. Since the ether is compacted and deformed by gravity, most scientists think it is gravity itself that is bending light. I think gravity distorts the ether, and light follows those distortions in the ether. If Dr. Smith's method can be realized, that would be very good evidence of the existence of an ether. He would be creating a 'hole' in the ether itself, causing light to bend around the hole instead of travelling straight through it.
I can't believe none of the techno-geeks here commented on the fact that the Romulans not the Klingons, invented the cloaking device, as the thread title implies.
