Fact or fiction? Science or Science Fiction- cloak of invisibility probabilty?

Question

American and British researchers have made a cloak of invisibility-if you've read ( I'm sure you're already familiar with the name ) Harry Potter, you'll know what this means. What do you think? Plausible or not? Before you click the button that says answer question, please read the article and then make your point and why. We already know that parallel universes exist- so why not this? My inquiring mind wants to know what you think.Thanks for your time.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15329396/ to read more on the article.

Answer 1

It is not just plausible, but very possible. There are many ways of doing this. In fact, it has already been done in mother nature. The strong force of gravity emitted from a galaxy or other, not necessarily large, very massive object has been known to bend light rays around it. This is called gravitational lensing. If done correctly, it is possible to "hide" an object from view. You can also do this the way that these researchers did, use a material to bend the light (electromagnetic (electroweak) radiation) around the object.

Answer 2

Definitely plausible. I've been following the story for awhile now, and while I don't think we'll end up with an actual cloak like in Harry Potter, I do think that we'll end up with somekind of device that will be able to hide another object, whether its alive or not. It might take a while longer, but basically I think the technology is at a similar point to a computer in the 50's. Conceptually functional, big, balky, and unwieldy, and without some of the major technological breakthroughs that got computers to where they are today, but its a start.

Answer 3

I got so excited, when I read this, but this week's Science won't get here before early next week.
It looks very interesting, but so expensive that I doubt they would waste research money on clothing or such a cloak for normal people or even soldiers. Now for spies, it might be a different matter.
There was a movie that came out recently based on the Philip K Dick story "Through a Scanner Darkly" which has a different kind of invisibility cloaking device.

Answer 4

American researchers have also made a body-suit of armor, which has the ability to create the wearer to be almost invisible. The wearer will look like the heat coming off of a street on a very hot day- how it's done? They have a tiny camera on the front and back of the suit- and a little computer that re-creates the front to the back, the back to the front. The armor outside is made of fiber-optic material and under that is Kevlar body armor.

Answer 5

Interesting but so little real information. I have not sen a report of this yet which states on what SCALE these experiments were carried out -- if the copper cylinder was one millimeter across, it is a laboratory success without much real-world use. If the copper cylinder was a meter across, now we are talking something really interesting.

A "Harry Potter" style cloak is probably still not going to be possible -- this approach described relies heavily on geometry from what I understand, and a fabric type cloak would not have a truly controllable geometry.

Think of those light reflectors in the middle of the road for example: They reflect light right back at you because the geometry is such that no matter what angle light enters at, it is reflected back in the exact opposite direction. Radar reflectors (used by the Navy to mark small low-lying islands that might escape notice on radar, making them a navigational hazard) work the same way.

This new "cloaking device" seems to be much the same sort of thing -- as long as the reflectors are set up right, they bounce microwaves AROUND the thing in the middle, and the microwaves go out the other side continuing in the same direction. And if the microwaves are coming from a radar, and that radar signal bounces off something in the distance, the reflected microwaves come back and are steered around the object and continue on back to to the radar antenna. Pretty doggone cool, truly cloaks the thing from detection by microwave radar and the radar can still detect things on the other side of it, so they would not suspect anything.

But...

it is totally dependent on this structure of reflectors -- if they can't be made in a shape that surrounds an airplane and still lets it be aerodynamic enough to fly, it won't be much use for airplanes. If it can't be made to surround a ship and still have gun ports and missile ports and openings for the ships radar, same problem -- it will prevent the primary use of the object being hidden, which is a net NEGATIVE usefulness in application.

Then there is the often-overlooked line "The cloaking has to be designed for specific bandwidths of radiation" (this sentence is about halfway through the "CASTING A SHADOW" paragraph, just past halfway through the article). As a former weapons systems technician, I can assure you our radars ALREADY use multiple frequencies, both to prevent interfering with each other AND to specifically deal with this kind of problem -- the ability to make specific materials that absorb specific bandwidths of microwaves (part of Stealth technology) has been known since the 1960's, and has been countered to one degree or another in many modern weapons systems. Making materials that absorb a wide range of microwave frequencies is much more difficult, so the radars are designed to be able to "scan" (if you will) a target at multiple frequencies so that the optimal frequency can be used -- this is also done to prevent radar jamming by the target.

So we would possibly wind up with something that does a great job of making something invisible to one frequency or type of radar but not another -- this would be like making something invisible if you look at it in green light, but not if you look at it in blue or red light. Since white light is made up of all the frequencies of light from the lowest-frequency red light up through the highest-frequency violet light, that won't help much. If they can make it work for the whole "bandwidth" of visible light, then you might be able to put it around a tank or something and make the tank invisible to the human eye -- but it will still RADIATE infra-red so will show up on thermal imaging systems such as the one in the Abrams tank or the Apache helicopter. And it will still show up on radar which would be a very different bandwidth than visible light, by a factor of ten million to one or so (light waves are far far higher in frequency than microwaves).

Still, it is an interesting effect and a good start. But I don't plan on getting TOO excited about it just yet -- so far, Stealth and Camouflage seem to work pretty well for keeping things hidden form microwaves and from the human eye... and the SEP field works amazingly well (read Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy) ;)

Answer 6

Probably impossible. To cloak against any single frequency is possible, that much has been proven. Since light is made up of a whole range of frequencies, you need to find the metamaterial for each one, and combine them into a single shield, all without destroying the cloaking properties of each "ingredient". That is a pretty tall order.

Also, your point about parallel universes is both incorrect and irrellevant. Irrelevant pecause metamaterials are based totally on the physics of this universe, and incorrect because parrallel universes (universi?) are hypothetical, and have not yet been proven.

Answer 7

It's possible, but I doubt that a real working Invisibility Cloak used either by Military personnel, police, private agents, etc. is seen in our path, BUT, I do believe the fact that the person who invents this product will be rich out of their mind.

Answer 8

Tha's really cool. It is going to revolucionize the way we percieve things. I have read that in 2003 a group of scientists from Japan invented an invisible coat. However, this cloak is way better.

Answer 9

Way cool, but all star trek nerds know that the Federation is prohibited from conducting this kind of research under the Kittimer Accord.

Answer 10

Most possible, search for metamaterials on goole and wikipedia.