Title: Invisibility
Description: Yay!
Deltasix - July 31, 2006 04:54 PM (GMT)
| QUOTE |
Scientist thinks invisibility possible in future
By Patricia Reaney 2 hours, 32 minutes ago
LONDON (Reuters) - It's unlikely to occur by swallowing a pill or donning a special cloak, but invisibility could be possible in the not too distant future, according to research published on Monday.
Harry Potter accomplished it with his magic cloak. H.G. Wells' Invisible Man swallowed a substance that made him transparent.
But Dr Ulf Leonhardt, a theoretical physicist at St Andrews University in Scotland, believes the most plausible example is the Invisible Woman, one of the Marvel Comics superheroes in the "Fantastic Four."
"She guides light around her using a force field in this cartoon. This is what could be done in practice," Leonhardt told Reuters in an interview. "That comes closest to what engineers will probably be able to do in the future."
Invisibility is an optical illusion that the object or person is not there. Leonhardt uses the example of water circling around a stone. The water flows in, swirls around the stone and then leaves as if nothing was there.
"If you replace the water with light then you would not see that there was something present because the light is guided around the person or object. You would see the light coming from the scenery behind as if there was nothing in front," he said.
In the research published in the New Journal of Physics, Leonhardt described the physics of theoretical devices that could create invisibility. It is a follow-up paper to an earlier study published in the journal Science.
"What the Invisible Woman does is curve space around herself to bend light. What these devices would do is to mimic that curved space," he said.
Although the devices are still theoretical, Leonhardt said scientists are making advances in metamaterials -- artificial materials with unusual properties that could be used to make invisibility devices.
"There are advances being made in metamaterials that mean the first devices will probably be used for bending radar waves or the electromagnetic waves used by mobile phones," he said.
The devices could be used as protection mechanisms so the radiation emitted from mobile phones does not penetrate electronic equipment. It is guided around it.
"It is very likely that the demonstration for radar would come first and very soon. To go into the visual will take some time but it is also not so far off," Leonhardt said. |
Zairik - July 31, 2006 05:54 PM (GMT)
It's only fantasy.
I'd bet this idea will make a great disappearing act.
Deltasix - July 31, 2006 06:04 PM (GMT)
| QUOTE (Zairik @ Jul 31 2006, 01:54 PM) |
It's only fantasy.
I'd bet this idea will make a great disappearing act. |
I was just excited that this was on Yahoo frontpage.
Zairik - July 31, 2006 06:40 PM (GMT)
| QUOTE (Deltasix @ Jul 31 2006, 02:04 PM) |
| QUOTE (Zairik @ Jul 31 2006, 01:54 PM) | It's only fantasy.
I'd bet this idea will make a great disappearing act. |
I was just excited that this was on Yahoo frontpage.
|
Wow, they have nothing better?
Look at all the disclaimers just in the title.
Scientist (singular) thinks invisibility possible in future
IceMetalPunk - August 3, 2006 09:45 PM (GMT)
| QUOTE (Deltasix @ Jul 31 2006, 11:54 AM) |
| It's unlikely to occur by swallowing a pill or donning a special cloak |
Maybe in this theory, but that has already been done.
Popular Science magazine had an article about it. Scientists made a material embedded with millions of microscopic prisms. The prisms refract light in only one direction, and the way the prisms are arranged forces the light out at around a 180 degree refraction: guiding the light around the object wrapped in the material.
ATM, the prisms are not quite small enough for detail, so the background image does blur at the material's surface, but scientists are working on that (trying to shrink the prisms down as small as possible without changing their refractive properties). And you can still see wrinkles as wrinkled images, but wearing a stiff clothing underneath would fix that by preventing wrinkles altogether.
I can't find the link to the online article (it was almost a year ago that I saw it), but there was a picture of a man wearing a raincoat made of the material standing in front of a care outside. You could see the man's uncovered face, as well as the wrinkles in the coat, but you could also see a blurry image of the car and trees behind him.
-IMP ;) :)
RancerDS - August 4, 2006 02:07 PM (GMT)
Didn't they make this work once before already? Seems like they made a whole ship invisible or something. Lessee... what was it... oh yeah, a U.S. Navy vessel in what was termed as the "Philadelphia Experiment". Although there is still much secrecy concerning that little excercise, there is agreement they may have been a little too successful in hiding it from view.
IceMetalPunk - November 26, 2006 06:45 PM (GMT)
Just an update: Metamaterials (which have already been created) designed in specific ways (not yet created, but entirely possible and probable) are the newest hope for invisibility to light, including radio waves. It may also be used to focus X-Rays onto only the part of your body that you want an image of, protecting the rest of you from potential cancer-causing radiation.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/...60525193729.htmI've also read somewhere else (I believe Popular Science, but I'm not completely sure) that they can do this already with metamaterials, but only with 1 wavelength at a time. So completley red objects could be invisible, but objects with more than one color wouldn't be able to use it. Hence, why they're still working out the kinks.
-IMP ;) :)
