Random Thoughts of Mine...

A friend of mine asked me to do this post. I've seen stories in the news about scientists working on cloaking devices, similar to the ones we see on Star Trek. I saw an episode of That's Impossible on TV about the work being done on achieving a real cloaking device. Of course the military is interested in this technology, for obvious reasons. They have been helping with some of the funding into the research presently being done around the world. Here are 3 articles that you might find interesting:

British Army tests 'invisible' tank, ala James Bond style
Quite reminding you of Q or David Copperfield, the Ministry of Defense has unveiled a new technology that can make tanks invisible. They carried out secret trials recently and have stated that the invisible tank would be ready for service by 2012. The technology involves using cameras and projectors to beam images of the surrounding landscape onto a tank. As a result, anyone looking in the direction of the vehicle only sees what is beyond it and not the tank itself. According to a soldier present at the trial, "This technology is incredible. If I hadn't been present I wouldn't have believed it. I looked across the fields and just saw grass and trees - but in reality I was staring down the barrel of a tank gun."

Read the rest of the article here.

New Steps Towards A Real Invisibility Cloak
Invisibility technology: no longer just for rarefied parts of the spectrum

Ouch, Harry Potter. Your new movie doesn't premiere for two months, yet real scientists are already one-upping you

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Cornell University both said last week they've designed invisibility cloaks that work in the visible-light spectrum. OK, so they're not big enough to cover a budding young wizard sneaking around at night, but hey, it's a step.

Two teams, led by Michal Lipson at Cornell University and Xiang Zhang at the University of California Berkeley, said their nano-scale invisibility cloaks allow light to flow around a hidden object as water flows around a rock. The cloaks contain a mirrored edge with a bulge that appears as though it's flat.

The feat solves an age-old problem faced by children huddling under blankets: You'd still see the cloak, but now you would have no idea what lies beneath.

Read the rest of the article here.

New Metamaterials Could Produce Sonar Cloaking Device
Acoustic metamaterial bends sound waves to hide ships from sonar, effectively rendering them sonically invisible

A new material created by researchers can refocus sound around certain objects and effectively render them sonically invisible to sonar. No natural material can do this, so man-made “metamaterials” must be created in order to toy with the laws of physics to essentially bend sound back on itself. Mind blown yet?

The technique, which bends light well beyond its natural tendencies, has been used for years in lenses used ultra-high-resolution imaging and has also been applied to real visible-light cloaking devices. The same theory is in use here, making a sort of acoustic lens, a material covered by a set of cavities which, when filled with water, work together to resonate with each other and refract the sound.

Read the rest of the article here.


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