Invisibility Cloak Swirls Closer to Reality

Question:

Where is the material placed relative to the object being cloaked?

Interesting stuff.

Hook

Where can we find more information on how this technology works? I'm very interested..
MZ

I can actually see this working. If you can find the right distance, it would indeed look like you weren't standing there, just because the material is bending the light away from you or the viewer.

How could this help with imaging etc? I agree it would have great potential.

Hey guys just wanted to supply you with some information to help understand this. And this is just as I interpreted it based on information gained in college journals and previous pop sci articles. Everything has some sort of index of refraction. Meaning everything bends light, water, glass, air. However there are materials that are being developed that when combined with electro magnetic fields create an artificial negative index of refraction. These are call metamaterials. If you can get the correct negative index of refraction you will become completely invisable, or at least thats the idea. Problem: Once all light is bent around the object no light is entering through this barrier... meaning you would not be able to see out of the cloak. Even when this is perfected it may still have motion issues like seen with predator.

to answer the first question, if all goes right it wont matter how far the material is placed in reference to the object.

2nd question, The best place to find more info is to search science journals for research into metamaterials

3rd question, the benefit is almost obvious, but also misleading. It sounds like you can see through an obstruction like an xray looks through your leg. But this can only force you to see AROUND an object. So you can still see past an obstruction to your view, however the cpabilities are greatly limited... The camera won't be able to see out of a box but if an automated camera is forced to have an obstruction pass by the lense you may be able to coat the obstruction so the camera can still see it's target. EXAMPLE: automated cameras support arm won't get in the way as it swings around.

I think that the researchers at Berkeley have done an awesome job creating these two new metamaterials. Also, by using these, hopefully one day they could be used to camouflage war machines and the like. I just wonder if these researchers had thought of creating something like this before J.K. Rowling introduced the invisibility cloak in her Harry Potter series.

J.K. Rowling was not the first person to imagine a cloaking device. The earliest I've heard of is the Romulan Bird of Prey in the original Star Trek series and that was filmed in the 1960s. I'm sure researchers have wanted to create something like this since the Trojan Horse.

I don't see the point. :O)
Actually, it's kinda neat, just don't lose your invisibility cloak. They're hard to find.

http://beecherbowers.com

Metamaterials will open all kinds of applications most of which we can't yet imagine. Even if it were to work perfectly today, you'd still have to wait for the manufacturing costs to come down to fulfill the material's full potential.

www.trezora.com

Honestly metamaterials will be first manufactured for armed force usage. When utilized in the battle field it will give the ultimate advantage of invisibility and the element of surprise! Although I must tell you that metamaterials are not that costly from a standpoint without the cost of manufacturing. Silver and magnesium on a nanoscale level which would produce a cloak which will be about as thick as a peice of paper will not be that expensive. The expense at first will be how to mass produce efficiently. I don't know how much it costs to make a robot with nano fingers small enough to stack the 2 metals

To answer the question Hook had...The thing you are cloaking goes in between the metamaterial so the metals which are stacked tightly together can refract the light to the next little nano mirror if you will(Doing this thousands of times sending the light bending around the object from the other side)...all the way around the object to the other side from where the other person is seeing! So they see what is actually behind you.

As for cloaking earlier in history...it has been done. Their is actually a story about a US Navy ship which was sometime in the 40's. They used 2 large metal coils on each end of the ship. Although they said they immediatly haulted any further advancements because some people were missing and some embeded in the iron haul of the ship when it became visable again. Saying it disapeared in a green fog and appeared the same way. Only down a few hundred meters! This is actually how the recent materials were made based upon the metals of those coils. Only using them on a nano (extremly small) scale. Theory could be that using it on the larger scale as in the 40's caused the refracted or bent light to act as a magnifying agent and melt certain concentrated areas of the ship. Kinda like using a magnifying glass to fry a bug as a kid.

As for the military advantage...Think of having field fatigues that have a sort of aluminum foil type of outside and being able to be almost unseen like the Preditor from the movies. Only obsticle at this point is visability. But I'm sure technology with build us eyeholes. If the guy who put em in the tobogan can do it...So can we! The US military is on such edge with Terrorism that we will have invisible spies in every country in the world acting as Big Brother! I would enjoy the safety but am a little worried about how this could get taken advantage of.

There will be a lot of good and a lot of bad brought from this technology when it hits the masses. There will be cloaked robberies, yet cloaked armed law heroes I'm sure.

Technology comes from knowledge. Knowledge is power. And with great power comes great responsibility. I hope we use this technology responsibly!

Umm my response to the last phrase buckybulldog101 is "With great power come great Irisponibillity." besides since these are metaMETALS you are not compeatly invisible shure you are invisible to the human eye, so no human can see ya. but it doesn't cloak your body heat and radar wont be blinded by this new material. but still I think this technology will be awesome for both practical and millitary usage. not that it will be practical due to the fact that the Millitary will keep the exect recipie to themselves. more then likely if you want this thech anytime before the millitary does then gett a bunch of metametalist people and work together on developing this awesome tech. then send me the recipe so I can try it out.

-Your Friend Zunigadragon

wow people can send images around the world, through walls & buildings and they can't figure out how to make an object invisiable. lol

It all depends on how you look at it...I already figured out a way...cut a sphere in half. Cover the outer shell of one sphere with tiny cameras and monitors...kind of like a disco ball, then do the same to the other half of the sphere. The tiny cameras & monitors...tiny flat screen of course, are dispersed like binary ones & zeros...so now when the sphere is put together, any object inside becomes invisable because you bend the light by sending image captured on one side of the sphere to the oposite side. I'm sure they must have a program out there to blend the image from all the little camera's on one side with all the little monitor's on the oposite side. One side takes in images, the others side pores out images...kind of like water through a siver