How to Build a Time Cloak with Mirrors

Link

I'm not sure how practical this is in real life.
But physicists have come up with time cloak.

I guess you could hide things in plain site with this.
Might be a good way to hide an aircraft or drone via visual stealth.
I wonder if they could apply this to hide from radar as well.
hrm...

The ability to hide objects in space– invisibility cloaking– has leapt from the world of science fiction to practical reality within 10 years. But the ability to hide objects in time– temporal cloaking– is evolving even faster.

During the last two years, physicists have begun using exotic metamaterials to create holes in time. The first time cloak lasted only for 100 nanoseconds or so. But last month, researchers showed how to cloak data almost half of the time. That’s an impressive improvement.

Today, Miguel Lerma at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, goes even further. Lerma has worked out how to build time cloaks that can operate for arbitrarily long periods of time using little more than a few cleverly placed mirrors.

The basic idea behind time cloaking is simple. Imagine viewing a clock illuminated by a laser. In ordinary circumstances, the light leaves the laser, travels to the clock and reflects towards you, the observer. At each stage, the speed of light is constant.

The trick behind time cloaking is to slow down light before it reaches the clock creating a gap in which the movement of the clock is not illuminated. You, the observer, cannot see what happens during this time.

However, by speeding up the light again after it has been reflected, it is possible to close the gap so that you do not notice any change in illumination either.

Instead, you see the clock jump from one moment to a later time without anything in between. “The distant observer therefore only sees a continuous illumination, whilst the events that occurred during the dark period of the cloak’s operation remain undetected,” says Lerma.

In effect, this process has created a hole in time during which events are hidden.

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

I would totally have so much fun with this technology. Just think of the awesome pranks you could pull on your friends and family!

Making the entire aircraft invisible to the naked eye is a bigger challenge. For one thing, we don't currently have the technology to manufacture materials on the small scale required to manipulate light waves. Light wavelengths are measured in nanometers (billionths of a meter), and the metamaterials needed to block light must be even smaller than that. Another challenge is that a metamaterial cloaking device would have to be arranged to manipulate light on the entire visible spectrum, because different colors exist on different wavelengths. And lastly, a cloaking device would plunge a person on the inside into darkness, as the light that would normally reach him or her would be diverted around the cloaking device.

Metamaterial

Cool tech but talk about opening up Pandora's box, I see nothing good coming of this. How to do all manor of evil hidden behind a time cloak with the observer none the wiser. The gov is going to be all over this guaranteed.

This is quite fascinating. Also, kind of hard to wrap my head around.

I really like how they could simplify it the diagram, this one is for sure a must follow for me. The rate of technological advancement is astonishing these days. What a crazy time we live in!

Thanks for posting Op! S&F

The trick behind time cloaking is to slow down light before it reaches the clock creating a gap in which the movement of the clock is not illuminated. You, the observer, cannot see what happens during this time.

However, by speeding up the light again after it has been reflected, it is possible to close the gap so that you do not notice any change in illumination either.

Instead, you see the clock jump from one moment to a later time without anything in between. “The distant observer therefore only sees a continuous illumination, whilst the events that occurred during the dark period of the cloak’s operation remain undetected,” says Lerma.

In effect, this process has created a hole in time during which events are hidden.

Very interesting but I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around this. I need a You Tube video to demonstrate this concept.

What I think they are saying is they can create an illusion of a clock's time being stopped This does Nothing for actual Real Time but only for an observer looking at a clock face during the experiment.

My problem with this is since Real Time is never effected how can they justify the lost time period from the clock (say lost time between 10 minutes after the hour to 20 minutes after the hour) - taking place in the same few seconds time ( real time) it takes for the observer to make these observations. This cannot be done, it's impossible.

I think it's an interesting theory to play with but there can be no truth to this being at all real due to the above.

Originally posted by 1nf1del

Making the entire aircraft invisible to the naked eye is a bigger challenge

Not really. Wonder Woman has her invisible jet. I know this is true because she tied me up with her magic lasso and forced the truth on me.

Props to Lynda Carter - still one of the hottest women on the Planet.

I think they're already using something like this in aerospace but with screens. Don't hold me to this cos I can't remember where I heard it, but from what I gathered, they have cameras on the top of the aircraft and on the bottom of the aircraft they have screens which show what's coming through the cameras.

(Ok I totally got the wrong jist of it there, but have some interesting facts anyways)

The problem with using it on aircraft is that most people now don't detect aircraft by sight, they use radar, so anything visual wouldn't help much.

It is pretty darn cool though

Originally posted by Florasaurus
I think they're already using something like this in aerospace but with screens. Don't hold me to this cos I can't remember where I heard it, but from what I gathered, they have cameras on the top of the aircraft and on the bottom of the aircraft they have screens which show what's coming through the cameras.

The problem with using it on aircraft is that most people now don't detect aircraft by sight, they use radar, so anything visual wouldn't help much.

It is pretty darn cool though

I wouldn't doubt it, the government probably has a lot of stuff 50 years ahead of what they're actually showing us!

Originally posted by JohnPhoenix

The trick behind time cloaking is to slow down light before it reaches the clock creating a gap in which the movement of the clock is not illuminated. You, the observer, cannot see what happens during this time.

However, by speeding up the light again after it has been reflected, it is possible to close the gap so that you do not notice any change in illumination either.

Instead, you see the clock jump from one moment to a later time without anything in between. “The distant observer therefore only sees a continuous illumination, whilst the events that occurred during the dark period of the cloak’s operation remain undetected,” says Lerma.

In effect, this process has created a hole in time during which events are hidden.

Very interesting but I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around this. I need a You Tube video to demonstrate this concept.

What I think they are saying is they can create an illusion of a clock's time being stopped This does Nothing for actual Real Time but only for an observer looking at a clock face during the experiment.

My problem with this is since Real Time is never effected how can they justify the lost time period from the clock (say lost time between 10 minutes after the hour to 20 minutes after the hour) - taking place in the same few seconds time ( real time) it takes for the observer to make these observations. This cannot be done, it's impossible.

I think it's an interesting theory to play with but there can be no truth to this being at all real due to the above.

That is what I got from it too, it's almost out of the realm of my understanding but I think it has to do with how slow your eye processes that light.

reply to post by 1nf1del


Easily... I mean the SR-71's first flight was 1964 and as far as we can see, technology hasn't really advanced since then. There must be sooooo many things that we don't know about, I would love to know even 10% of the things that are going on

Originally posted by Florasaurus
reply to post by 1nf1del

 

Easily... I mean the SR-71's first flight was 1964 and as far as we can see, technology hasn't really advanced since then. There must be sooooo many things that we don't know about, I would love to know even 10% of the things that are going on

edit on 22-8-2013 by Florasaurus because: Can't words

You must have seen the news clip from the middle east that was on Al Jazeera I think? With the transparent figure that runs into the shot and climbs onto an armored vehicle? It's hard to deny cloaking tech after seeing that!

reply to post by 1nf1del


Ooh no, I haven't seen that... Do you have a link for it??

reply to post by JohnPhoenix

Very interesting but I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around this. I need a You Tube video to demonstrate this concept.

The basic idea behind time cloaking is simple. Imagine viewing a clock illuminated by a laser. In ordinary circumstances, the light leaves the laser, travels to the clock and reflects towards you, the observer. At each stage, the speed of light is constant.

I can't even imagine a clock illuminated by a laser. I'm imagining a clock on the wall being illuminated by a laser pointed at it.



Does this article mean that a laser is projecting the time onto a bare wall?

Is this the one you meant?? That's absolutely crazy... Why does he show up in front of the tank but not in the grass? I thought cloaking was cloaking no matter what you stood in front of

Originally posted by Florasaurus

Is this the one you meant?? That's absolutely crazy... Why does he show up in front of the tank but not in the grass? I thought cloaking was cloaking no matter what you stood in front of

edit on 22-8-2013 by Florasaurus because: (no reason given)

Ya that's it, too close to the tank? Maybe he was too close so the optical illusion didn't look right!

Originally posted by mcx1942
This is quite fascinating. Also, kind of hard to wrap my head around.

I really like how they could simplify it the diagram, this one is for sure a must follow for me. The rate of technological advancement is astonishing these days. What a crazy time we live in!

Thanks for posting Op! S&F

There was an episode in the series "UFO" (Ed Straker etc...) that had this idea. The bad guy could control the delay of time around him, so essentially he appeared to be somewhere different from where he actually was. The good guy managed to kill him by just firing in a circle.

reply to post by jiggerj


Laser beam can be spread out so it looks like a beam from a torch. That's how I imagine they light something up with a laser.

My question, though, is how they are going to speed up the light after it has been slowed down. You can't get it going faster than its natural speed, so the time gap will not be closed.