At Last
Science is on the verge of creating invisibility cloaks. Maybe more like the verge of the verge. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics’ SIAM Journals:
We describe recent theoretical and experimental progress on making objects invisible to detection by electromagnetic waves. Ideas for devices that would once have seemed fanciful may now be at least approximately implemented physically using a new class of artificially structured materials called metamaterials. Maxwell’s equations have transformation laws that allow for the design of electromagnetic material parameters that steer light around a hidden region, returning it to its original path on the far side. Not only would observers be unaware of the contents of the hidden region, they would not even be aware that something was being hidden.
OK, maybe the verge of the verge of the verge. Last August Reynolds was cautioning people not to get too excited about recent developments, when Popular Mechanics reported some practical constraints. The PDF of this latest SIAM article summing up that and other recent research, all Greek to me, doesn’t appear to suggest they’ve exactly cracked the code yet but they are getting there, and devices are in reach. Glad to see they’re working on something useful, anyway. No real advances in transport in decades. You can’t work on them anymore, but they aren’t exactly teleporters. This Internet has been nothing but a pain in the ass, taking up all my time, making my wife yell at me, computers fritzing all the time. iPods and cellphones are OK, I guess.
A few years ago, it was posed as a big psychologically probing question on This American Life. Would you rather have the power of flight, or invisibility? I seem to recall gals were going for flight, guys were more interested in invisibility.
Nod to American Elements, a sort of scientific Drudge.
Meanwhile, unrelated, largely different, in the Age of Obama, advances in metagoverning allows reverse invisibility. He is seen, yet there is no one there. Herr Doktor Surber, mad-as-hell scientist, explains.
Topics: science
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:21 pm on Wednesday, March 11, 2009
One Response to “At Last”
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March 12th, 2009 at 9:35 am
The power of invisibility can be used to save humanity: we wrap all of the lefties in the stuff, and use that other scientific wonder known as “duct tape” to secure their hands and mouths.
Viola’!!!!!! A brief, profound silence followed by a rational world.