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Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951 Likes: 6
Officially "too old for this shit" 15000+ posts
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OP
Officially "too old for this shit" 15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951 Likes: 6 |
Theories see path to invisibilityNew materials that can change the way light and other forms of radiation bend around an object may provide a way to make objects invisible, researchers say.
Two separate teams of researchers have come up with theories on ways to use experimental "metamaterials" to cloak an object and hide it from visible light, infrared light, microwaves and perhaps even sonar probes.
Their work suggests that science-fiction portrayals of invisibility, such as the cloaking devices used to hide space ships in Star Trek, might be truly possible.
Harry Potter's cloak or the Invisible Man of films and fiction might be a bit harder to emulate, however, because the materials must be used in a thick shell.
The concept begins with refraction--a quality of light in which the electromagnetic waves take the quickest, but not necessarily the shortest, route. This accounts for the illusion that a pencil immersed in a glass of water appears broken, for instance.
"Imagine a situation where a medium guides light around a hole in it," Physicist Ulf Leonhardt of Britain's University of St. Andrews, wrote in one of the reports, published in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
The light rays end up behind the object as if they had traveled in a straight line.
"Any object placed in the hole would be hidden from sight. The medium would create the ultimate optical illusion: invisibility, Leonhardt wrote.
The light, or microwaves, or radar would travel along the threads of the cloth, ending up behind the object without having touched it.
"You just need the right set of material properties and you can guide light,"
The invisibility would work both ways--a person hidden from the visible light spectrum would have to use infrared or sonar or microwaves to see out, he said.
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Joined: May 2003
Posts: 14,203
1 Millionth Customer 10000+ posts
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1 Millionth Customer 10000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 14,203 |
I'd have no problem wrapping myself in this invisible shell.
Bow ties are coool.
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 13,392
[insert non-dated reference here] 10000+ posts
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[insert non-dated reference here] 10000+ posts
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 13,392 |
It looks like her left leg has been amputated.
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Joined: Apr 2005
Posts: 340
300+ posts
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300+ posts
Joined: Apr 2005
Posts: 340 |
Why don't they just invent an S.E.P. field? From what I hear its alot easier, than actual invisibility.
I am a man with needs. Rack JLA!!!
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Joined: Dec 2004
Posts: 3,153
Unbreakable 3000+ posts
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Unbreakable 3000+ posts
Joined: Dec 2004
Posts: 3,153 |
Quote:
Randal_Flagg said:
Why don't they just invent an S.E.P. field? From what I hear its alot easier, than actual invisibility.
A fellow Douglas Adams friend? 
"Batman is only meaningful as an answer to a world which in its basics is chaotic and in the hands of the wrong people, where no justice can be found. I think it's very suitable to our perception of the world's condition today... Batman embodies the will to resist evil" -Frank Miller
"Conan, what's the meaning of life?"
"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women!"
-Conan the Barbarian
"Well, yeah."
-Jason E. Perkins
"If I had a dime for every time Pariah was right about something I'd owe twenty cents."
-Ultimate Jaburg53
"Fair enough. I defer to your expertise."
-Prometheus
Rack MisterJLA!
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