Duke Demonstrates "Active Camouflage"

[Fuser]

And just when I thought Multicam was the sh*t.

 

From the New York Times

 

If you click the link there are pictures. Here's the beginning of the article:

 

Flirting With Invisibility

 

Increasingly, physicists are constructing materials that bend light the “wrong” way, an optical trick that could lead to sharper-than-ever lenses or maybe even make objects disappear.

 

Last October, scientists at Duke demonstrated a working cloaking device, hiding whatever was placed inside, although it worked only for microwaves.

 

In the experiment, a beam of microwave light split in two as it flowed around a specially designed cylinder and then almost seamlessly merged back together on the other side. That meant that an object placed inside the cylinder was effectively invisible. No light waves bounced off the object, and someone looking at it would have seen only what was behind it.

 

The cloak was not perfect. An alien with microwave vision would not have seen the object, but might have noticed something odd. “You’d see a darkened spot,” said David R. Smith, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke. “You’d see some distortion, and you’d see some shadowing, and you would see some reflection.”

 

A much greater limitation was that this particular cloak worked for just one particular “color,” or wavelength, of microwave light, limiting its usefulness as a hiding place. Making a cloak that works at the much shorter wavelengths of visible light or one that works over a wide range of colors is an even harder, perhaps impossible, task.

 

Nonetheless, the demonstration showed the newfound ability of scientists to manipulate light through structures they call “metamaterials.”

 

Obviously the military would be interested in any material that could be used to hide vehicles or other equipment. But such materials could also be useful in new types of microscopes and antennae. So far, scientists have written down the underlying equations, performed computer simulations and conducted some proof-of-principle experiments like the one at Duke. They still need to determine the practical limitations of how far they can bend light to their will.

 

The method is not magic, nor are the materials novel. Physicists are taking ordinary substances like fiberglass and copper to build metamaterials that look like mosaics of repeating tiles. The metamaterials interact with the electric and magnetic fields in light waves, manipulating a quantity known as the index of refraction to bend the light in a way that no natural material does.

 

“There are some things that chemistry can’t do on its own,” said John B. Pendry, a physicist at Imperial College London. “The additional design flexibility with introducing structure as well as chemistry into the equation enables you to reach properties that just haven’t been accessible before.”

I remember seeing something about some sort of active camouflage in National Geographic a while back. Is this really cool or have I just been playing too much Metal Gear Solid?

[GuzziHero]

 

[Fuser]

LOL one dude in the first video blinks a LOT.

 

P.S.

Its not news until its in the Times.

[Spedz]

So'wI' yIchu'!

 

[edit] Lol mixed up the tags! D:

[ECRRRainman]

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

I call shenanigans on the second video. Wouldn't the optical ball and brick show his face when passed over it and not the wall behind him?

[GuzziHero]

I think the second is effectively blue-screen tech, like weather reports use.

[Fuser]

Yeah I'm not sure if the second vid demonstrates the most current technology, its probably just a prototype. If you read the article, all they were able to "cloak" was a small cylindrical space, not even close to a full BDU.