3 ms·
I think you might misunderstand how these systems work. Your mirror analogy is more correctly applied to current military stealth systems: tricks of geometry a
by redacted 16y ago
I think you might misunderstand how these systems work.
Your mirror analogy is more correctly applied to current military stealth systems: tricks of geometry are used to make the vehicle harder to detect.
With these "invisibility cloaks" there is no indication to the observer that the object even exists. The light appears to have passed completely through the object and reflected off the surface below with no interference.
For further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial
- michael_dorfman 16y agoIf I am reading the material correctly, the light appears to have passed completely through the object if and only if you happen to be sending the beam of light of the wavelength they are expecting from exactly the position they expecting. In other words, big whoop.
- aphyr 16y agoDid you even read the article? It explicitly states the cloak bandwidth includes red, green, and blue optical frequencies. Calcite's dispersion relation gives slightly different shifts for each frequency, but this is nevertheless a huge step forward. http://arxiv4.library.cornell.edu/abs/1012.2238 http://arxiv4.library.cornell.edu/abs/1012.2238 http://arxiv4.library.cornell.edu/abs/1012.2783v1 http://arxiv4.library.cornell.edu/abs/1012.2783v1
- regularfry 16y agoFrom my reading, in this case the light still bounces off the material in question. The reflected light follows the path which it would if the object were not there, but presumably the object still absorbs some of it.