What are you planning to do with it?
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General discussion
Scientists ponder invisibility cloak
How cool is this?
"This is very interesting science and a very interesting idea and it is supported on a great mathematical and physical basis," said Nader Engheta, a professor of electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Engheta has done his own work on invisibility using novel materials called metamaterials.
Pendry and his co-authors also propose using metamaterials because they can be tuned to bend electromagnetic radiation - radio waves and visible light, for example - in any direction.
...
"To be realistic, it's going to be fairly thick. Cloak is a misnomer. 'Shield' might be more appropriate," he said.
Cloak, shield, who cares? I want one.
Discussion is locked
11 Posts
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1) If you are invisible, and light goes right through or around you, can you see?
2) What the heck really goes on in the ladies' room?
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trouble. I was thinking about simpler things. Like robbing a bank.
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Don't even think about it, Ed. The batteries powering the thing would almost certainly run dry JUST BEFORE you got the answer to the question - with predictable consequences and no expansion of your knowledge.
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here is mister Nader Engheta home page where you can find links to his recent papers... not the easiest reads but some might find it illuminating.
also included is Prof Sir John Pendry Wikapedia page and an article from the imperial college re: his research.''we are working on a new sort of optical material which refracts light in a completely different fashion from any other class of material''
and another article from The Scotsman about Scientific wizards find real cloak of invisibility
Funny how Harry Potter seems to be the favorite comparison when talking about invisibility in these articles.
interesting stuff
grim
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We could put one on our border fence so Mexicans running across would bump into it. Boy, what a surprise that would be! Also, our soldiers could walk around not having to worry about getting shot.
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Composed of tiny rods, ensembles of metal rings and the like, metamaterials are artificially structured composite materials that were first made by David Smith, now at Duke University, and colleagues in 2000. What makes them unusual is that they have a negative refractive index ? that is, they bend light in the "opposite" direction to ordinary materials. Their electromagnetic properties can also be "tuned" by manipulating their precise structure.
John Pendry of Imperial College London -- working with Smith and his Duke colleague David Schurig -- has now shown how metamaterials could guide light around a hole within it. Any object placed inside this hole would then be "hidden" because light can not reach it and you would be able to see behind the object as if it was not there. All light rays that come from one direction would propagate around the hole and then be recombined as if nothing were there, a bit like water flowing round a rock. Working independently, Ulf Leonhardt of the University of St Andrews in the UK has also come to the same conclusion.
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