Now You See It, Now You Don’t — an Invisibility Cloak Made of Glass - Polidicks

[release]July 21, 2010— From Tolkien’s ring of power in The Lord of the Rings to Star Trek’s Romulans, who could make their warships disappear from view, from Harry Potter’s magical cloak to the garment that makes players vanish in the video game classic “Dungeons and Dragons, the power to turn someone or something invisible has fascinated mankind. But who ever thought that a scientist at Michigan Technological University would be serious about building a working invisibility cloak? [img]http://www.mtu.edu/news/images/2010/image29784-rside.jpg[/img] A glass cloak designed to hide a metal cylinder. The upper inset shows the distances between resonator arrays. The lower one highlights the cylindrical spokes made of glass resonators and fused silica spacers. That’s exactly what Elena Semouchkina, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Tech, is doing. She has found ways to use magnetic resonance to capture rays of visible light and route them around objects, rendering those objects invisible to the human eye. Semouchkina and colleagues at the Pennsylvania State University, where she is also an adjunct professor, recently reported on their research in the journal Applied Physics Letters, published by the American Institute of Physics. Her co-authors were Douglas Werner and Carlo Pantano of Penn State and George Semouchkin, who works at Michigan Tech and Penn State. They describe developing a nonmetallic cloak that uses identical glass resonators made of chalcogenide glass, a type of dielectric material (one that does not conduct electricity). In computer simulations, the cloak made objects hit by infrared waves—approximately one micron or one-millionth of a meter long—disappear from view. Earlier attempts by other researchers used metal rings and wires. “Ours is the first to do the cloaking of cylindrical objects with glass,” Semouchkina said. Her invisibility cloak uses metamaterials, which are artificial materials having properties that do not exist in nature, made of tiny glass resonators arranged in a concentric pattern in the shape of a cylinder. The “spokes” of the concentric configuration produce the magnetic resonance required to bend light waves around an object, making it invisible. Metamaterials, which use small resonators instead of atoms or molecules of natural materials, straddle the boundary between materials science and electrical engineering. They were named one of the top three physics discoveries of the decade by the American Physical Society. A new researcher specializing in metamaterials is joining Michigan Tech’s faculty this fall. Semouchkina and her team now are testing an invisibility cloak re-scaled to work at microwave frequencies and made of ceramic resonators. They’re using Michigan Tech’s anechoic chamber, a cave-like compartment in an Electrical Energy Resources Center lab, lined with highly absorbent charcoal-gray foam cones. There, antennas transmit and receive microwaves, which are much longer than infrared light, up to several centimeters long. They have cloaked metal cylinders two to three inches in diameter and three to four inches high. “Starting from these experiments, we want to move to higher frequencies and smaller wavelengths,” the researcher said. “The most exciting applications will be at the frequencies of visible light.” So one day, could the police cloak a swat team or the Army, a tank? “It is possible in principle, but not at this time,” Semouchkina said. Her work is supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. [/release] [url=http://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2010/july/story29391.html]Source[/url]

That's very [b]smashing[/b]

Finally, the ultimate rapist weapon!

Needs pics.

I can see this working.

[QUOTE=Niko Bellic;23630257]Needs pics.[/QUOTE] Here's a pic of it on a desk [img]http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/7577/what1a.png[/img]

[QUOTE=QuickSnapz;23630422]Here's a pic of it on a desk [img]http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/7577/what1a.png[/img][/QUOTE] I don't see anything.

[QUOTE=Inspector Jones;23630609]I don't see anything.[/QUOTE] That's kind of the point of an invisibility device, son.

Prove it then Mr. Scientist with your science and glass.

[QUOTE=QuickSnapz;23630422]Here's a pic of it on a desk [img]http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/7577/what1a.png[/img][/QUOTE] rofl

i bet the guys at Michigan Technological University play amazing pranks on each other :buddy:

This is amazing.

cool, I want active camo

I'd have to see it to believe it wait....

Pics or it didn't happen. Wait...

Now this, I didn't see coming.

[QUOTE=QuickSnapz;23630422]Here's a pic of it on a desk *desk*[/QUOTE] Wouldn't the top of the desk be invisible, considering it's an invisibility cloak?

[QUOTE=shatteredwindow;23632083]cool, I want active camo[/QUOTE] I'd love to see your penis.

well the whole scientific angle on making an invisibility cloak that i read from an article like this about 6 months or so ago was the attempt to make it out of a material that can bend light around an object as to make it invisible to the naked eye because non of the sources and streams of light that our eyes can see reflect off the actual object.

I've seen articles about this before, although up until now it's just been a theory. Good old MIT, though, eh? They release the world's most badass physicist, and then they put Harry Potter out of business. :eng101: [QUOTE]Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.[/QUOTE] Awesome.

I request a rule 34 on this one :v:.

i demand a picture of something being put behind it

[QUOTE=QuickSnapz;23630422]Here's a pic of it on a desk [img]http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/7577/what1a.png[/img][/QUOTE] [img]http://www.epicallyfunnypictures.com/FunnyPictures/ISeeWhatYouDidThere/Dontseewhatudid.jpg[/img] [editline]02:03PM[/editline] [QUOTE=CommieTurtle;23634091]Wouldn't the top of the desk be invisible, considering it's an invisibility cloak?[/QUOTE] No, invisibility for us so far works by bending light around an object. There actually could be something on that table being cloaked, we just wouldn't see it cause the light from the table and the surroundings totally misses the object and never touches the cloak.

[QUOTE=Niteshifter;23637509]I request a rule 34 on this one :v:.[/QUOTE] A 1.5m x 1m prototype of the glass redirecting photons around upper body of two lesbians creating the illusion of invisibility: [img]http://a.imageshack.us/img713/5599/lesbianchamber.png[/img]

Good thing George Lucas didn't make this in his movie.

[QUOTE=starpluck;23639264]Good thing George Lucas didn't make this in his movie.[/QUOTE] Yep. Unforeseen lawsuits everywhere :smug:

All this new technology will be so out of style some day. That just amazes me.

Uhm, they already have made a sort of cloaking device. I think it was some Japanese scientists who made a cloak with thousands of nano cameras and nano screens covered all over the cloak. So the nano cameras would capture the image from one side and show it on the screen on the different side of the cloak and this all over.

[QUOTE=GranaMan;23640839]Uhm, they already have made a sort of cloaking device. I think it was some Japanese scientists who made a cloak with thousands of nano cameras and nano screens covered all over the cloak. So the nano cameras would capture the image from one side and show it on the screen on the different side of the cloak and this all over.[/QUOTE] No, that video wasn't a real cloaking device, it was just tricks with a greenscreen sort of effect.

[QUOTE=MaverickIB;23640881]No, that video wasn't a real cloaking device, it was just tricks with a greenscreen sort of effect.[/QUOTE] Oh? I thought i remembered seeing this on the discovery channel or something.