Cloaks of invisibility in science

On April 30, 2009, two teams of scientists developed a cloak that rendered objects invisible to near-infrared light. This technology unlike its predecessors did not include metals which resulted in losses of light. Researchers mentioned that since the approach can be scaled down further in size, it was a major step towards a cloak that would work for visible light.

* On October 19, 2006, a joint effort between scientists from the United Kingdom and the United States produced a cloak that routed microwaves of a particular frequency around a copper cylinder in a way that made them emerge almost as if there were nothing there. The cloak was made from meta-materials. It cast a small shadow, which the designers hope to fix.

The device works only in two dimensions and only at a particular microwave frequency. Work on achieving similar results with visible light is in progress.[5][6]

David R. Smith, Augustine Scholar and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke University which demonstrated the first working "invisibility cloak" makes reference to a fundamental problem with these devices as "invisibility cloaks"

“ It's not yet clear that you're going to get the invisibility that everyone thinks about with Harry Potter's cloak or the Star Trek cloaking device. To make an object literally vanish before a person's eyes, a cloak would have to simultaneously interact with all of the wavelengths, or colors, that make up light. ”

Despite this, an American group of scientists say that a cloak could be very similar to the invisibility cloak in Harry Potter. The design calls for tiny metal needles to be fitted into a hairbrush-shaped cone at angles and lengths that would force light to pass around the cloak. This would make everything inside the cone appear to vanish because the light would no longer reflect off it. "It looks pretty much like fiction, I do realize, but it's completely in agreement with the laws of physics," said lead researcher Vladimir Shalaev, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue. "Ideally, if we make it real it would work exactly like Harry Potter's invisibility cloak," he said. "It's not going to be heavy because there's going to be very little metal in it.

WOW
thats realliy interesting.
I can't imagin the possibliltys are goverment would have with a cloaking device.
although with all the heat sensors and stuff it might not work
although if i read it right it should even be invisible then, right?
said something about being invisib;e in infrared

intresting stuff, i do agree that we can become invisible and it links in with travelling forward in time, I'm going to make a little topic about it as I LOVE hearing other peoples on this.

i read online somewhere that the army is developing something to that extent. ill see if i can find it in a little while. it had to do with new uniforms that they plan to field in 2010 and then a second iteration in 2020. I think it was called the 2020 Future warrior initiative. Chances are that darpa is involved as it calls for nanotech for strength improvement and "fluid" armor. Heck, this stuff is part of the reason why i re-enlisted!!!

on a side note, all this information is unclass and can be pulled off of the web. it was published and released to the public, so no worries about matters of national security.

yes, i have seen this also. it was beng used on tanks where a camera would project the image of whats behind the tank onto the nanoparticles on the front, making it invisible, It was in the sun newspaper UK

[edit on 14-5-2009 by WhatsHappening]

the thing is that if it was to be applied to an individual, with the technology right now, it would cause some distortion when you move and for instance if it was raining, you would still see the silouhette of the individual wearing it from the raidrops beading over them

sorry, totally not trying to spam this thread, but i was thinking, you would also have to take into account the psychological aspects of this on the enemy. i mean, imagine you are standing there in a field and all of the sudden, you have a whole platoon worth of distortions in your vision heading at you!

the applications of this technology are so broad though that something to the extent of cloaking an entire facility could probably be feasible. it wouldnt show up on sattelite images, people driving nearby would never see it. as far as anyone is concerned, it wouldnt exist. hmmmm makes you wonder seeing as how everyone knows that things like this released to the public are years behind black projects.

definatly, we dont know the half of anything these days, so much is hidden from the public. Personally I feel that the governments are already using special weapons in Iraq and Afghan that we dont know about, and as for space and aliens, thats a whole different kettle of fish!!

reply to post by WhatsHappening


haha, if we are using special weapons over here, that sucks, all i got is my M16!

well, im just stuck to my virtual m16 (cod4 FTW) but I have no intention on joining the army. I fortunatly have a good brain and im going down the maths and physics rout and hopefully into the creation of these technologies

I have a thread that has quite a bit of info that would be relevant to this thread.

On The Horizon: Cloaking Research From The World Of Nanotech

There are a few approaches that are being undertaken to achieve this. The mythos surrounding The Philadelphia Experiment would hint that strong EM fields were used initially as a candidate to achieve cloaking.

In the 80's mathmaticians used clever hull design to reduce radar signature, thus creating a cloak of sorts.

However, it was the introduction of nanotech that really brought forth the possibilities. The EM nature of light allows for some novel approaches when specific surface designs are created on the nanoscale (metamaterials):

www.sciencedaily.com...

Last year researchers from Duke University stunned the world when they announced a cloaking device for the microwave range. This device made use of metamaterials that had a negative refractive index for electromagnetic radiation. The metamaterials were carefully designed split-ring resonators with a structure size much smaller than the wavelength. Only 10 stacked layers of metamaterials were necessary to achieve the desired invisibility effect. .....(snip)..... Possible applications in the future include perfect lenses that beat the diffraction limit, and optical cloaking devices which provide some invisibility for macroscopic objects

There are several other links, with research from multiple universities, in my other thread.

However, i want to note a completely different approach to the cloaking concept:




Warp drive and cloaking devices, not just science fiction anymore?

Another scientist and one of the leaders in cloaking research is John Pendry, a theoretical physicist at Imperial College, London. It was he who first worked out how a cloak could be built in theory, and then he helped build the first working cloak. Pendry recently submitted an abstract that discusses what he says is a new type of cloak, one that gives all cloaked objects the appearance of a flat conducting sheet. Pendry says this type of cloak has the advantage in that nothing remarkable is required to create the cloak. Pendry said the device could be "made isotropic. It makes broadband cloaking in the optical frequencies one step closer." This type of cloak seemingly creates a mirage to render an object invisible to the eye. Pendry's own website says information on his new cloak will be available soon.

The wise researcher will make special note of the above information on Dr. Pendry's approach.

[edit on 14-5-2009 by bigfatfurrytexan]

I'd say we will at least develop an invisibility cloak beta by 2016

reply to post by genma


???

It is already in full production. There was a video of soldiers in Iraq that, in all appearances, were cloaked.

Regardless, the technology was perfected several years ago. Late 80's/early 90's. The stealth planes used a precursor to the cloaking tech, but were able to absorb radar/EM, not light.