Science closing in on cloak of invisibility

Maxwell Smart would be proud.

The research was supported by Raytheon Missile Systems, the Air Force >Office of Scientific Research, InnovateHan Technology, the National >Science Foundation of China, the National Basic Research Program of >China and National Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province, China.

Well don't the Russians feel a bit "left out"?

The Uni students could use this to grow their pot without detection. Great technology!

The Russians? How about the Japanese?

Science closing in on cloak of invisibility

How will they know if they can't see it?

I hear they lost three of them already ...... they think.

A couple years a go a saw an "invisibility cloak" made by japanese scientists, but I think the device was not working with the same kind of process. It was quite impressive thought.

Still I think this kind of technology is just too dangerous. And anyway, what is the point of being invisible? See and not being seen? Thats called spying!

I only see bad uses for this kind of device.

The Romulans already have it.

Nori - That's what you think. The Federation stole it from the Romulans!

Well, the idea is interesting. Maybe it might be possible with a well-aligned array of glass-fibers to cloak part of the visible spectrum. The formulas in

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/314/5801/977.pdf

are not so difficult. Maybe an intelligent array of mirrors (in some sense equivalent to glass-fibers) might do the trick. The more I think about it - in 2 dimensions it is easy to cloak a 1-dimensional object. And in 3 dimensions it is easy to hide a 2-dimensional object. Then to hide a 3 dimensional object (in space) a 4-dimensional structure is necessary. So far, 4-dimensional objects (in space) have not yet been build (only in science fiction), so probably the way to go is to transform a fractal geometry from a 2 dimensional surface to a 3-dimensional volume. However, so far I have seen only 2-dimensional fractals ... might be interesting to think about.

Well, they're making progress. When the first stories about these experiments were published more than a year ago, I think they could only conceal something about the size of a pencil lead.

The Russians? How about the Japanese?

The Japanese have no worries, they'll get it eventually from the US since Japan is an American military asset.

The Romulans already have it.

But they gave it to the Klingons.

WillB; You saw an invisible cloak huh. Were you smoking potted plants with an english teacher at the time perhaps??

i am surprised that the US is working with the Chinese on this sensitive area, which has dual applications, including military...

i'm pretty sure that the innovation came from the Chinese side in this case. It's pretty much a one way street if you know what i mean.

There are some good universities and tech parks in Jiangsu province, but i didnt know they were so far ahead in Nanotech.

Dual applications, military and what? Fashion?

This reminds me of a question my junior high school teacher asked our class:

Would you rather be able to become invisible, or be able to fly?

A classmate answered, "I would like to be able to fly, like a bird, because I would then be free, like a bird."

All the girls giggled and thought he was extremely cool.

I wondered what I tripped over on in the street the other night. I swear I never saw anything.

"Dual applications, military and what? Fashion?".

My guess would be practical jokes.

Fun as it sounds, it certainly has plenty of awful possibilities.

"Dual applications, military and what? Fashion?".

I would imagine the other application would be for things like SWAT, counter-terrorism and change rooms.

Certainly sounds more efficient than the little image relay system.

http://www.tecfre.com/i-can-be-invisible-invisibility-cloak/