What's got Billy so spooked?

[MJ12]

Cloak of invisibility takes a step forward

WASHINGTON – From Grimm's fairy tales to Harry Potter, the cloak of invisibility has played a major role in fiction. Now scientists have taken a small but important new step toward making it reality.

Researchers at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology report they were able to cloak a tiny bump in a layer of gold, preventing its detection at nearly visible infrared frequencies.

Their cloaking device also worked in three dimensions, while previously developed cloaks worked in two dimensions, lead researcher Tolga Ergin said.
The cloak is a structure of crystals with air spaces in between, sort of like a woodpile, that bends light, hiding the bump in the gold later beneath, the researchers reported in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science.

"In principle, the cloak design is completely scalable; there is no limit to it," Ergin said. But, he added, developing a cloak to hide something takes a long time, "so cloaking larger items with that technology is not really feasible."
"Other fabrication techniques, though, might lead to larger cloaks," he added in an interview via e-mail.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100318/ap_on_sc/us_sci_cloak_of_invisibility

 

[Shem]

That's pretty cool. Perhaps in the future, invisibility cloaks will be sold at local stores like any other item. Probably not in the near future, though.

 

[Acepilotf14]

Shit, the Koreans better not build a physics center.

 

[Lucid]

 

[PJ]

That's cool. I'd like to see the science behind it a bit more though.

 

[MJ12]

In the end, it will just be used to cover up blemishes and cold sores

 

[Bad^Hat]

This is pretty neat except for the part where they compare a scientific breakthrough to Harry ****ing Potter.

 

[Naph]

Shut up! Harry is real!

 

[Stigmata]

Harry Potter is more real right now than the Higgs-Boson particle.

Prove me wrong, HL2.net!

 

[Warped]

I could have sworn I heard this news like a year ago including the 'nearly visible infrared" stuff. still cool though, i can go to work naked finally!

 

[Tyguy]

This is pretty neat except for the part where they compare a scientific breakthrough to Harry ****ing Potter.

It's the science fiction that promotes the enthusiasm to try and make these things a reality, but yes, i share your discontent with movies involving wizardry.

 

[Maestro]

It's the science fiction that promotes the enthusiasm to try and make these things a reality, but yes, i share your discontent with movies involving wizardry.

It's speculative fiction, thank you very much. :dork:

 

[Bad^Hat]

Harry Potter is more real right now than the Higgs-Boson particle.

Prove me wrong, HL2.net!

Well, let's put J.K. Rowling and a blank manuscript in the LHC and find out.

Might as well do Stephanie Meyer as well, just to be safe.

 

[Stigmata]

I'd rather not risk making J.K. Stephnie Potter a fundamental part of the standard model.

 

[DEATH eVADER]

I cannot wait for my Cloak and Dagger