Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Lois & Clark Appearance of invisibility closer to reality

Though you might be intersted to know that the invisibility suit in ILTY is no longer anywhere near as far-fetched as it may have seemed when the show first aired...

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/wire/sns-ap-us-sci-cloak-of-invisibility,0,6183867,print.story

cheers,
Lynn

Yes, I read that!

There are two problems here: one that the cloak worked only at infrared frequencies. And since our human eyes work at visible, not infrared frequencies, this cloak wouldn't hide an object from human sleuths and spies!

The second problem was that the cloak so far developed was incredibly tiny.

But I agree with you, Lynn, this is certainly a promising start and a fantastic concept. And lead researcher Tolga Ergin was optimistic that the technique could be improved:

So Lois's question to Clark, if he would rather fly or be invisible, might sound different to us in a few years, if invisibility cloaks have become a reality by then!



The future Clark Kent?

Ann

Naw, couldn't be -- the tie is too staid. ;-)

cheers,
Lynn

Aargh! Rant ahead!

Hot button topic! Hot button topic! Hot button topic!

Invisibility is far, far more difficult than ANY movie or TV show wants to admit. Here are the problems:

Think about what invisibility means. You look at a person or object, and you see what is behind them as it they were not there. It has to work from every angle. No matter what direction someone looks at you, they have to see whatever is behind you along their line of sight.

And to be effective, the image that the person sees cannot be distorted by the presence of you in your invisibility suit.

And finally, when you move, there must not be a sign of image distortion that would give away your presence.

1. Invisible due to not emitting light at visible wavelengths:
• Won’t work. No visible emission => Black. If you had a suit that did this, your invisibility suit would be pitch black.
2. Invisible due to bending light around:
• This could theoretically work, but would be impossible in practice. It’s hard enough to get light to bend around an object, but think about the problems of getting the light waves straightened out again. Remember, it has to work from every angle. There can be no distortions and it has to handle when you move.
3. Invisible due to passing light through:
• How do you make your body transparent?
• Even if you achieve perfect transparency, there is still another problem. Edge effects and Distortion. Remember, a glass is transparent. What you see when you look through very clear and clean glass is the bending and surface interactions of the light. You have to have no distortion. That is *very*difficult problem and can only be solved by making your body and everything inside the invisibility field to have the same refractive index as your medium. (Air, water, whatever.)

Invisibility is fun, but we *might* get real invisibility suite/cloaks just after we get functional transporters. (And please don’t get me started on the so-called quantum entanglement effect that has gotten some press as transportation. (It depresses me that any person with scientific training would compare what has been achieved with Star Trek type transporters. Quantum entanglement is not transportation! )

Sorry. I love sci-fi but as is often the case, some things are so hard to do that they are effectively impossible.

Beam me up, Scotty.

Bob

Hmmm, Bob, I wasn't thinking!

Oooops...

Maybe this mother and child are wearing some kind of invisibility cloak, and they are indeed transparent... but this does not mean that they are invisible, however!



Originally posted by Bobbart:



Okay!



Ann

I agree wholeheartedly with your first quoted statement, but I would not state your second one with anywhere near as much certainty as you do. No one ever said an invisibility suit would be easy to develop. And you state clearly some of the numerous difficulties. But it has not been proven a scientific impossibility, and as the article I cited above indicates, we have already taken baby steps in the direction of developing such a technology.

We may never live to see it fully developed into something that would truly hide anything very large; but given how much technology has progressed in the last century and a half, I would be very hesitant to claim that something that is not physically impossible will never be developed technologically. After all, consider what the view of the average person in the 1850s probably would have been -- "People in metal containers that fly? A human walking on the moon? Beaming sounds and pictures through the air invisibly? Heating food in seconds? Preposterous! It could never happen!" And yet all of that, and so much more, is commonplace now.

Since you mentioned Star Trek, it seems fitting to paraphrase McCoy, "I'm a computer networking instructor, not a physicist," but my admittedly lay understanding of physics is that the transporter does defy the rules of physics as we currently understand them, but an invisibility suit does not. Therefore, unless our understanding of physics changes dramatically in the future, we will never get a functional transporter, but we may someday get an invisibility suit.

And until such time, I guess I can end this note with...

Be seeing you ;-)

Lynn

My favourite has always been that humans couldn't possibly travel on a train at the speed the Rocket went at because they would suffocate through lack of oxygen.

LabRat

I'm still waiting for the hyperspace rocket engine that goes faster than light.

But I'll settle for aircars. Remember the Jetsons? They zoomed around town in their sporty little aircars (at least George Jetson did- it looks like the family only had one aircar and he got to drive it.)

Also, Bob, you are an engineer, and therefore tasked with taking ivory tower theory and actually making it work in the real world. So you have a respect for real world issues. Because they always come up and bite you in the (you know where.)

I do have a little joke for the engineers out there:

A physicist, engineer and a statistician are out hunting. Suddenly, a deer appears 50 yards away.

The physicist does some basic ballistic calculations, assuming a vacuum, lifts his rifle to a specific angle, and shoots. The bullet lands 5 yards short.

The engineer adds a fudge factor for air resistance, lifts his rifle slightly higher, and shoots. The bullet lands 5 yards long.

The statistician yells "We got him!"