But then you'd be blind...
From CTV:
Imagine an invisibility cloak that works just like the one Harry Potter inherited from his father.
Researchers in England and the United States think they know how to do that. They are laying out the blueprint and calling for help in developing the exotic materials needed to build a cloak.
The keys are special manmade materials, unlike any in nature or the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. These materials are intended to steer light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation around an object, rendering it as invisible as something tucked into a hole in space.
I'll try to get some time to read the paper later, but for now, consider the fundamental problem with invisibility. Any system that makes you invisible immediately renders you blind. To see, light has to be absorbed by your retina. That's why the pupils of your eyes are black -- no light is coming back out. But in order to be invisible, light would either pass through you or around you, but either way, the retina would be cheated of the light it needs to function. If you arranged for the eyes to be exempt, you could see, but then everyone around you would see your eyes too, since they would be absorbing and reflecting light in the regular fashion.
A practical invisibility suit might include some sort of radar scanner or sonar that creates an image for the wearer of his surroundings using non-visible radiation or sound, respectively. Of course, you'd still be blind inasmuch as visible light was concerned, but once you were trained up on how to use the radar or sonar display, you might be able to move around, after a fashion.
But then strapping a radar system to a person, transmitter and receiver and power system and computers and displays, and then making the person and his radar invisible, is hardly something that would impress Professor McGonagall. Typical muggle nonsense, she would say.
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Comments
...invisible cloaks eh?...still awaiting Scotty to beam them up?
Here's a cheaper way, often done by well planned jewel thiefs. Take a picture of the corridor or room and paste it to the camera lens.
Or get a sandwich board size picture of stuff behind you...ooooooOOOOh wait, put a 6' LCD screen in front of you and a web cam attached to your butt...
Hopefully lens facing outward, might get a bit embarrasing tho...
Posted by: tomax7 at May 25, 2006 05:38 PM
It's a cheap joke, but I thought it was pretty funny, so I thought I'd share (plus, it'll probably make some readers' temperature rise, which is always fun!).
Apparently, according to another blog I was reading the cloak already has an enthusiastic customer waiting eagerly for their first shipment.
The Harper cabinet.
Posted by: Lord Kitchener's Own at May 25, 2006 07:09 PM
Um... "That's why the pupils of your eyes are black -- no light is coming back out."
Sheesh.
The pupils of your eyes aren't anything but apertures through which light passes. They're not "black". They're clear, i.e. transparent. That's why they appear red in flash photographs -- because the intense short-term light of the flash has actually illuminated all the blood vessels on the inside back portion of your eyeball. That's why they look milky in people with cataracts -- because the condition is a "clouding" of the eye's crystalline lens, which sits behind the pupil.
Your pupil isn't black. It only appears black because, in the vast majority of conditions under which people face each other, the insides of their eyeballs aren't lit up. Your statement is the same thing as saying "That's why the air in your bedroom at night is black."
Try again.
Posted by: quasi-not-real-modo at May 26, 2006 09:24 AM
...the light in my bedroom is orange because we got a streetlight outside nearby...
;-)
But true on the pupils.
Posted by: tomax7 at May 26, 2006 09:59 AM
The whole "how can you see if you're invisible" problem is trivial, and easily solved if you have the technology to become invisible in the first place. The key is to remember that "invisible" does not mean "transparent" but rather "not able to be seen." There are many things that cannot be seen, not because they are transparent, but because they are small.
Imagine a sheet of this super invisible material. Imagine a pinprick in it. Imagine, behind the pinprick, a system of lenses for magnifying and focussing the light coming through.
Can you see a pinprick? Yes, if you're close enough and know where to look. But if you don't know it's there, you'll never spot it by accident.
Posted by: 2dave at May 26, 2006 11:03 AM
The actual device would be more like a shield than a cloak that one could wear. It's proposed application is for ships, tanks, aircraft etc.
Don't expect to be wearing it anytime soon.
Posted by: Cardstonkid at May 26, 2006 12:26 PM
Why not an invisibility cloak that's selective? For example, it might let in (and hence, out) a narrow and fluctuating band of ultra-high-frequency EMR. If the Federation doesn't know the code, it might never find the right wavelength except for a nano-second or so. Hi-tech hide and seek. Meanwhile the Romulans are sending out EMR in this manner and reading the echoes. Game over for the USS Enterprise.
Posted by: Dr.Dawg at May 26, 2006 01:35 PM
it seems y'all have way too much time on your hands.
BTW, I never would have pegged dawg for a trekkie!
Posted by: kelly at May 26, 2006 09:12 PM
nano nano...
Oh wait, wrong show.
You know about Klingons floating around Uranus eh?
Posted by: tomax7 at May 27, 2006 08:06 AM
Yeah, well, we all have our secret lives, kelly. :)
Live well and prosper.
Posted by: Dr.Dawg at May 27, 2006 08:42 AM
Invisibility cloak? Nope, sorry, I don't see that at all.
Posted by: steve d. at May 27, 2006 10:57 PM
To continue with Angry's theme, the logical approach to becoming invisible is to make the other person blind. If I cut your eyeballs out, you're damned right you won't be able to see me.
Just a pleasant early-morning thought.
Posted by: Ade at May 28, 2006 03:54 AM
...but Ade, we could get one of those neat sunglassy type thingies what-his-name work on Spaz Tek, err Star Trek.
Although he said in an interview he hated them, hurt his temples...
*sigh*
Posted by: tomax7 at May 28, 2006 02:52 PM
...what I really like to know is how'd they packaged all them invisible bike's in that Fed-Ex commerical.
And how do you know you got the right colour?
Posted by: tomax7 at May 28, 2006 02:53 PM
so you place a small sensor through the cloak.. problem solved.
Posted by: winston smith at May 29, 2006 09:57 AM
 
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