Scientists set sights on invisibility cloaks
- added July 1, 2008
- 11 responses
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- currentkid
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Teams of scientists around the globe say they're making progress on theories and experiments involving cloaking -- that is, making things invisible.
In theory, all that's needed to make a small object invisible is something called a superlens, says Graeme Milton, a mathematician at the University of Utah.
He and Australia-based collaborators Nicolae Nicorovici, Lindsay Botten and Ross McPhedran have made mathematical models showing that at a critical distance from a superlens, an object would seem to disappear.
A superlens has a negative refractive index, meaning light that hits it reverses and goes in the opposite direction. Physicist John Pendry at Imperial College London was among the first to propose superlenses in 2000.
At a certain distance from a superlens, an object becomes invisible because light that bounces off it cancels out with light reflecting off the superlens, Milton said. It's a little like noise cancellation devices such as earphones, he said.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/07/01/invisible.cloak/...
In theory, all that's needed to make a small object invisible is something called a superlens, says Graeme Milton, a mathematician at the University of Utah.
He and Australia-based collaborators Nicolae Nicorovici, Lindsay Botten and Ross McPhedran have made mathematical models showing that at a critical distance from a superlens, an object would seem to disappear.
A superlens has a negative refractive index, meaning light that hits it reverses and goes in the opposite direction. Physicist John Pendry at Imperial College London was among the first to propose superlenses in 2000.
At a certain distance from a superlens, an object becomes invisible because light that bounces off it cancels out with light reflecting off the superlens, Milton said. It's a little like noise cancellation devices such as earphones, he said.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/07/01/invisible.cloak/...
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- currentkid
- 1 month ago
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check it
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- currentkid
- 1 month ago
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Ha!
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Thought they were already trying to do this with fiber optics...
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- VigorousAlloy
- 1 month ago
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Wow, it's like my cartoon fantasies are coming to life. Um, I mean, yea, that sounds cool. :-X :-P
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Ladies locker room, here I come!
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- rpyromaniac
- 1 month ago
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This could be a good or a bad thing. It depends on how it gets used in the future.
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cloaking!
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- currentkid
- 1 month ago
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My boyfriend told me about something like this that he had read a while back. It's quite interesting, especially if you have an interest in physics. I believe that when I heard of this, they were only able to cloak something small, such as an orange. Wonder how much they can cloak now.
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- bekah_1984
- 1 month ago
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Fantastic, they'll make it easier to get away with committing a crime.
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Documentaries and wildlife shows will definitely make breakthroughs with this.
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