UK scientists working on cloaking device

We've heard of these kinds of guys before. They've spent too much time engrossed in Harry Potter books or old Star Trek episodes, and dream of some sort of device that will make them invisible. Every couple of years, one of them surfaces with a new idea about a "cloaking device" that can bend light around solid objects, making them appear to be invisible. This time, two separate teams in the UK are racing to show that the concept is feasible. One group, at Imperial College in London, believes that light-bending metamaterials can be produced within the next decade. Meanwhile, two mathematicians have published a study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, which claims that a "superlens" placed close to an object could produce an "anomalous localized resonance," essentially rendering the underlying object invisible by creating a phantom light wave using the same frequency. The scientists envision building a device soon -- one that could conceivably cloak particles of dust. We'll check back with both parties in a few years. In the meantime, we'd like to present our detailed artist's rendering, prepared at great cost and with much research, which we believe truly shows what a cloaked object will look like to the naked eye.

Read - Metamaterials
Read - Superlens

[alex @ May 25th 2006 4:16PM]

haha nice photo of the cloaking device

[Karl Viklund @ May 25th 2006 4:19PM]

LOL the ultimate Gadget! :D

[CRH @ May 25th 2006 4:19PM]

I don't know who does your artists rendering, but that guy is damn good.

[Karl Viklund @ May 25th 2006 4:22PM]

#2 It's clocked.

[billflu @ May 25th 2006 4:22PM]

The image is ingenious.

[shon @ May 25th 2006 4:35PM]

you guys are silly. SILLY!

[Grokodile @ May 25th 2006 4:37PM]

What? Your artist actually thinks the damned thing will work? What a buffoon!

[Chaos @ May 25th 2006 4:40PM]

Guys, guys... how many times have I said it... You can't have a personal cloaking device, its feasable on ships, but on a person? Thats just insane. The radiation from the Invisibilium will kill the average human, if not properly shielded. The only possible shielding for Invisibilium radiation, is Unobtainium. Unobtanium, in the ammounts required to shield a single gram of Invisibilium, weighs around 300 metric tons, give or take, and the only feasable way to do this is to mount it on a ship.

[Arjun @ May 25th 2006 4:45PM]

Nice pic!

[threefingeredlord @ May 25th 2006 4:45PM]

I hope you pay your artist alot, that will have taken him a while to draw...

[Chris Gunton @ May 25th 2006 4:47PM]

FAKE! PHOTOSHOP!

[kyle @ May 25th 2006 4:47PM]

Grand Admiral Thrawn will use this technology to crush the Rebel Alliance!!!

[threefingeredlord @ May 25th 2006 4:48PM]

OMG I JUST NOTICED!!! THOSE SIENTISTS COPIED APPLE! HOW DARE THEY STEAL WHITE FROM THE IPOD!!!!1111

[David Schurig @ May 25th 2006 4:54PM]

Um...yeah I guess we deserve the skepticism. I am an author on the Imerial College paper and a regular engadget reader. Here is the real timeline, and I will stake anything you like that these dates are realistic:

[Ashley @ May 25th 2006 4:55PM]

Already did this along time ago. Here's a picture of my car cloaked in the driveway

http://www.dospalmasaz.com/New%20Driveway.jpg

[David Schurig @ May 25th 2006 5:06PM]

My timeline seems to have been cut off. Here it is: (1 year) - 2D cloaking at microwave frequencies.
(5 years) -3D cloaking at far infrared frequencies.(10 years) - Cloaking of part of the visible light spectrum(20-30) years - flexible/wearable cloaks that work on part of the visible light spetrum. This may be as close ase we get to The Predator.(Maybe never)- cloaks that work over the entire visible light spetrum.

[Matt Galiazzi @ May 25th 2006 5:06PM]

#14 You want some car with those rims?

[Petey Boi @ May 25th 2006 5:07PM]

Why can it not work? Harry Potter did it...sigh :(

[blackout @ May 25th 2006 5:09PM]

ipod invisa is a step closer today

[Tom Stieger @ May 25th 2006 5:27PM]

I can see it! It is the REAL video iPod!!

[BEAT RAG @ May 25th 2006 5:41PM]

#8 you are talking out of your asstanium. Anything is possible.

[Mathew George @ May 25th 2006 5:43PM]

hey, you realize the govt probably has this stuff already, but theyre saving it for themselves.

[Tom Foolery @ May 25th 2006 5:44PM]

Picture a box cloaked with this. You look straight at it, you see right through it (technically around it). What happens when you look directly at the ground where the box is making contact with the ground? If you look at the ground pass the box no problem. But are there refected light beams coming back from the ground underneath the box because my guess would be no
so not only would the ground underneath the box not be cloaked but I can't comprehend what I would see.

unless light waves work on such a small scale that the light would still reach the under side of a box and be able to be reflected back? anyone understand what I'm talking about or have an know what would happen?

would be GREAT for flying object....

[Tom Foolery @ May 25th 2006 5:46PM]

Wish my spelling errors were invisible....

[diulei @ May 25th 2006 6:02PM]

Yea, I had a laugh too at the image. Good job guys!!! hahaha.

[Spyvie @ May 25th 2006 6:22PM]

I'll beleive this when I see it

[macona @ May 25th 2006 6:23PM]

8: Isnt the symbol for Unobtanium on the Periodic Table "Bs"?

[Mike @ May 25th 2006 7:18PM]

Okay.. so they're going to make some dust particles "disappear?" How will we know the difference, they're so small. They could just blow them away.. and how's that going to help? Haha.

[1TLRMS @ May 25th 2006 7:19PM]

I doubt I'll see it in my lifetime.

[Crazylink @ May 25th 2006 7:24PM]

Hmm "anomalous localized resonance" sounds sort of Half-Life-ish.

[TwoCents @ May 25th 2006 7:40PM]

Darn it,... I'm always losing things! Now just where did I put that cloaking device?

[Moogle @ May 25th 2006 8:24PM]

Tom: In the same way that the light from the ground will bend around the object to hit your eye, the light from the sun will bend around the object to hit the ground.

It would be impossible to tell it was there without touching it. On the other hand, if the box was sitting on a trampoline, there would just be a very odd, unexplainable dent in the canvas, and lots of injuries. :)

[airpolgas @ May 25th 2006 8:27PM]

Unobtainium is actually being used in Oakley glasses. It's also benn copyrighted.

http://oakley.com/copyright/

[Paul Camp @ May 25th 2006 9:46PM]

Is this an aerial view of your cloaked object at the North Pole? I mean, shouldn't cloaking imply being able to see the background through it? I think I might notice a big white box bearing down on me.

[Tom Foolery @ May 25th 2006 11:58PM]

Moogle:

1. Nice name
2. Yep that makes sense
3. But then if it was a box and the material was on the bottom it would be stationary unless they can make tires out of it.

I was picturing a 5 sided box with a person in it walking around (think Snake from metal gear solid). So if there was no bottom to the box what the hell would you see when you looked at where the bottom should be from outside the box?

[G @ Aug 7th 2007 9:43AM]

I think if the box was in contact with the ground, no light would get to the bottom of the box or the ground under it, cloak or no cloak, therefore you would probably just see no light, ie black. But the light could also be bending from somewhere else to the area that you'd be looking at, I imagine the cloaking device would never be perfect and you'd just see a warped image of what was behind it.

G

[Lenbot @ May 26th 2006 12:27AM]

Thats the object working but how does it look like when it's off.

[obm @ May 26th 2006 7:28AM]

The technology behind this is deviously simple. You disgrace the dust particles enough such that they do not want to show themselves in public anymore.

Other than that, in order to passively cloak a material using such technology, you need to transmit light waves faster than the immediate vicinity of the material. Because you need to cover more distance in same time as a light beam travelling in a straight line. Otherwise lens effect will be observable. In a highly scattering medium, this is possible, but using a laser will break the magic. In space this violates relativity, also in "clear" air the volume you can conceal is barely macroscopic. What you need is a computer or smt that predicts the image on one side based on a time correlated input on the other side in space I guess. Or a Romulan collegue!

[Aria @ May 26th 2006 9:10AM]

#26, I couldn't agree with you more. Actually, I refreshed my page at least twice before I realized that the device under development not only cloaks the desired object, but every thing behind it, too! Let me get my sheets, and I'll show you MY cloak(er).

[Chris @ May 26th 2006 1:01PM]

Hmm, must be some sort of problem with Safari. I'm not seeing this image here guys.

[Eric @ May 26th 2006 2:51PM]

didn't the military have a sort of cloaking device that has a bunch of video cams on one side of a tank and a bunch of small screens on the other? This way, you see what is on the other side of the tank, making it essentially invisible.

[Widsith @ May 30th 2006 11:01AM]

they stole this idea from me!!! how dare they!!

(i've been invisible for years!)

0_o