DARPA's cloak 18 months away...

Seems the material sciences people are doing some interesting things with "metamaterial"(s). DARPA has financed some research that could be in production in 18 months if the will was there, that has the capability of making "things" encompassed in the metamaterial 100% invisible. It bends light and EM! Here's two sources link1 and link2.

Thanx,

Victor K.

[edit on 25-5-2006 by V Kaminski]

Cool....imagine this on aircraft....neat stuff....

I really hate saying this, but my first thought was "OMG, a new weapon for Big Brother. They could put on the Cape of Invisibility, walk down the street, follow you home, and you'd never know it, because you couldn't see them.
Sad.

If one reads between the lines... a big chunk of physics would not apply inside the cloak... sound, EM etc. Hmmm. A "bubble" outside of normal physics, how about a metamaterial stiff skin airship, saucer... big black triangles that turn invisible? It does make one wonder.

Victor K.

[edit on 25-5-2006 by V Kaminski]

1. For something like a cloak, the object cloaked needs to be about the size of the wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum you want to cloak in, which means for visible light you can hide objects as large as one micrometer, or millions of times smaller than a fighter plane.

2. For larger objects than that, it can be made to be transparent, which would make it as useful to cloak objects as ordinary glass: the glass will be transparent and barely visible, the object behind it however will not.

[edit on 31-5-2006 by Simon666]

Geez these folks work fast... a prototype is complete and "working" on a small scale... there will be a feature this weekend on CBC's Quirks And Quarks. Here's the latest announcement in a CBC article..

Victor K.

43'

[edit on 19-10-2006 by V Kaminski]

not to surprising, modern tech is Years ahead of it's time, none of us ever actually realise it

Wow...I'm impressed.

Heres a quote from the article that I just dont understand.

The cloak could also have applications for wireless communications, the team said.

???- What applications?

I wish they would at least reveal some details on how its done...not a lot of details of course (national security reasons), but at least a little somethin.

I dont think it can outsmart everything. I'm very surprised that in can bend visible light. Everything has its counter...for every yin theres a yang. But I cant think of it...since these probably wont work: radar, lasers, cameras, Infrared.

Anybody got any ideas on what you think would counter this?
(I'm sure the scientists working on it know)

Originally posted by Murcielago
???- What applications?

It allows beams to be focussed more precisely than normal materials, it can act like a lense does in the visible spectrum.

Originally posted by Murcielago
I wish they would at least reveal some details on how its done...not a lot of details of course (national security reasons), but at least a little somethin.

Read papers on metamaterials and you'll find it's not as impressive as newspapers would like you to believe. Also read my previous post. Metamaterials can be made e.g. by embedding metal wires of the right diameter and conductivity in a material of the right electromagnetic properties.

Originally posted by Murcielago
I dont think it can outsmart everything. I'm very surprised that in can bend visible light. Everything has its counter...for every yin theres a yang. But I cant think of it...since these probably wont work: radar, lasers, cameras, Infrared.

It only works for visible light in theory. Noone has yet built one for visible light and it is even questionable whether there would be a use for it in visible light except for specialty microscopes, because as I've said before, the invisibility only works for objects about the size of the wavelength of the electromagnetic waves. For visible light that is between 400 and 800 nm, or one billionth of a meter. So don't think of Klingon like fighter jets of several meters large. Besides that, it only works optimally for one specific wavelength and rapidly deteriorates beyond that. So what you hide in one wavelength would be a lot more visible in others. Even in the visible spectrum, if you could hide a tiny object from violet light (~400 nm), your tiny object would be more visible in red light (~800nm).

so what are they going to use this cloak on, a human, to intercept what the other side is doing. so now we will have people running around which we can not see. so if you see anything floating by you or a cigarett floating and smoking by itself im to thiink it is one of these cloaked humans haveing a ciggarett. wow, now everyone has a reason to be paranoid of weird stuff happenning.

Hey Kaminski, I think normal physics would apply inside the bubble, its just that this cloak creates an extreme boundary condition around the bubble to produce the specific effect of apparent nothingness. Inside the bubble would be similar to a black body radiator, I imagine, absorbing and re-admitting energy so that it stays within the bubble.

Could get awfully hot in there if there are people inside!