Step aside Lan, move over Harry Potter, and watch out Predator, here comes some real-life proof of the theory that things can be made invisible! The technology hasn’t actually come up to this point yet, but about 5 months ago the team of scientists theorized that they could use a specific cloak to bend microwaves around an object, meaning that someone monitoring the waves would not be able to tell they had passed an object at all. The good news is that they suceeded, and now they are theorizing that the same can eventually be done with light waves!
This is right up there with many of the fantastical childhood dreams many of us share, such as flying cars, that awesome pink hover-board from Back to the Future 2, Invisibility, and a real-life Jurassic Park with better security.
The MSN article covers it very well, but the most excellent part is the very geeky approach they take:
A team of American and British researchers has made a Cloak of Invisibility.
Well, OK, it’s not perfect. Yet.
They actually provide a very good explination of exactly what was made:
In effect the device, made of metamaterials — engineered mixtures of metal and circuit board materials, which could include ceramic, Teflon or fiber composite materials — channels the microwaves around the object being hidden.
Looking at a cloaked item, Smith explained: “One would see whatever is behind the cloak. That is, the cloak is, ideally, transparent. Since we do not have a perfect cloak at this point, there is some reflection and some shadow, meaning that the background would still be visible just darkened somewhat.
This might be the turning point in technology that gets me all excited, but really the implications of such an invention are too far-reaching to be considered. My mind immediatly drifts to thoughts of oppressive government cameras floating through 90% of air space with no one even knowing it. Even more saddening is the thought that we would most likely never be able to get our hands on this kind of technology for personal amusement, but that’s probably for the best.
The article does an excellent job of exploring other possibilities, some spectacular, of application for such a device:
In a very speculative application, he added, “one could imagine ’cloaking’ acoustic waves, so as to shield a region from vibration or seismic activity.”
As an architect, the concept of earthquake cloaking makes me positively giddy, and it seems that univeral applications may keep presenting themselves as we learn more about the specific tech involved. If only it could be applied to cloaking someone from stupidity, then they’d have a multi-billion dollar idea on their hands!
Also, I stumbled upon a beautiful ad (actually for a television) which is just incredibly well done. I recommend checking it out here, it will take a minute or two to load, but what doesn’t these days? It seems to be the trend in good commercials lately to create macro-scale events in real-life places that require hours (if not days!) of cleanup. It’s good to see effective marketing nowadays.
Don’t lie, the real reason you like the idea isn’t because of being an Architecht, it’s because you like the idea of being AN INVISIBLE NINJA!
That commercial is from the same guy who did the swarm of bouncy balls down the streets of San Francisco. Probably my favorite commercial of all time. Not sure what it was advertising, but I thought it was really good.
Oh and let’s not forget the human-katamari commercial:
The bouncing ball commercial is the other one I was referring to, actually, and you can find it here: http://www.bravia-advert.com/balls/
What’s most amazing to me is how much i that ad wasn’t done with computers, when you go and take a look at alltheir footage of setting up those shots. That was awesome.
oh, and about a microwave cloaking etchhnology being converted into stress wave cloaking? It’s one thing to take the microwave technology and convert it into lightwave technology, their differences are merely frequency differences. I’d like to see more of the technology before I believe it would help mitigate earthquake damage, in any way.
I think it’s both funny and sad that the main way we get to see quality short films is if a big company pays for them and if they’re advertising a product (no matter how flimsy the connection is)
Flying cars were NOT a fantastical childhood dream. There were television shows about the future guaranteeing flying cars by the year 2000.