Cloaking devices

Mark Dygert

Yeah we stole it from the Klingons, so what?

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/cloaking.html

Actually its not that kind of cloaking, YET but its still pretty cool. I'm sure it will come in really handy in the war on terror what with all the "terrorist" using micro waves to find the hummers driving up and down the road

Thegodzero

Cool idea, other things it could be used for not said are radiation protection. Places like the poles where the ozone is depleting this could help protect things harmed by the higher radiation levels. Also on interplanetary space ships/probes to protect them from the full on radiation. It could allow us to make a maned trip to mars and back. I do like the idea of using it to channel light for solar cells.

hawken

there appears to be two or three people trying to make this tech now. First was that Japanese dude with the invisibility coat, then the cambridge guys with their copper cylinder that lets radar pass through it, a now this, which is the same as that UK guy, but it's not actually invisible like the Japanese one:

copper cylinder gadget:


Japanese dudes gadget (actual photos):


I can see which one is going to be on the market first

Michael Knubben

Err, Hawken? Correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't that the one that glows in the dark, making it rather unfit for military use?
Not only that, but i remember reading it wasn't all that functional to begin with, allthough i can't remember what the flaw was.

Jeremy Lindstrom

The fatal flaw was the it's viewed from a camera point of view, and then projected onto the jacket

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_camouflage

MoP

yes indeed, neither of them are cloaking devices... the japanese one would only work if you said "stand here and don't move, look in this exact direction"...

although the BBC did a good job of hyping up a headline which was pretty much 100% inaccurate:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6064620.stm

it's not a cloak, and it doesn't make things invisible, in the common usage of the word anyway.
still, it's an interesting advance in technology!

hawken

[ QUOTE ]
The fatal flaw was the it's viewed from a camera point of view, and then projected onto the jacket

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_camouflage

[/ QUOTE ]

no no no, that was his previous experiment.

this new one is something different. exactly what I'm unsure.

oh and lets be glad it's not good for military uses.

MoP

No hawken, the images you posted are of the "active camouflage" experiment as linked from the bottom of that wikipedia article - for example: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/29/1048653907088.html?oneclick=true

it's just a camera strapped to his back, a cleverly reflective coat, and a projector aimed at the coat. The only scientific advance there is that he's invented a very reflective material even when wrinkled.

Unless you have links to this "new" experiment? And don't say the photos you already linked, cos they're not!

hawken

I must have been dreaming.

I am the next HG Wells you know