- #1
MonstersFromTheId
- 142
- 1
This article is pretty neat. It talks about creating an invisibility "cloak" that works by bending light around things through the use of "metamaterials". Apparently this wouldn't be all that hard to do for making things invisible to RADAR waves (i.e. creating an invisibility "cloak" that, although it doesn't make things invisible to the naked eye, DOES make them invisible to radar) since radar waveslengths are measured in millimeters.
The problem with doing the same thing for visible light is that visible light is measured in nanometers, and at those short wavelengths you'd have to be able to manufacture and control the materials from which the "cloak" is made at nanometer scales.
Here's the link to the article:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12961080/
(Be sure to click on the link in that article to the "loophole" they're talking about as well)
I DO think a correction needs to be made to what this article says about using this particular "loophole" to get around the fact that light being bent around something takes a longer path.
My understanding of that particular little "loophole" is that although the peak pulse of a light beam can be shifted forward, there by giving the APPEARANCE of THE PEAK PULSE of the light beam traveling at FTL speeds, the transmission of ANY form of *information* is *still* limited to the speed of light in a vacuum.
I.e. Einstein's "causality" has not yet been disproven, and to date there's still no reason to suspect it can be.
That, at least to my little layman's brain says, that if a bird flew behind an invisibility cloak like the one described here, there'd still be distortions visible due to some parts of the image the cloak passes to your eyes taking a longer path to your eye than others.
Regardless, I thought it was a hell of an interesting idea.
Enjoy!
The problem with doing the same thing for visible light is that visible light is measured in nanometers, and at those short wavelengths you'd have to be able to manufacture and control the materials from which the "cloak" is made at nanometer scales.
Here's the link to the article:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12961080/
(Be sure to click on the link in that article to the "loophole" they're talking about as well)
I DO think a correction needs to be made to what this article says about using this particular "loophole" to get around the fact that light being bent around something takes a longer path.
My understanding of that particular little "loophole" is that although the peak pulse of a light beam can be shifted forward, there by giving the APPEARANCE of THE PEAK PULSE of the light beam traveling at FTL speeds, the transmission of ANY form of *information* is *still* limited to the speed of light in a vacuum.
I.e. Einstein's "causality" has not yet been disproven, and to date there's still no reason to suspect it can be.
That, at least to my little layman's brain says, that if a bird flew behind an invisibility cloak like the one described here, there'd still be distortions visible due to some parts of the image the cloak passes to your eyes taking a longer path to your eye than others.
Regardless, I thought it was a hell of an interesting idea.
Enjoy!
