INVISIBILITY cloaks that work at optical wavelengths are a step closer to reality thanks to a different take on the problem.In previous attempts fiendishly small structures had to be precisely positioned in the cloaking material. However, super-thin layers of much simpler stuff should do the trick.
Invisibility cloaks burst into the public consciousness last year, when a transatlantic team unveiled both the theory and a working device. Engineering constraints only allowed them to construct a cloak that could hide a very small object at microwave wavelengths, as confirmed by a microwave detector, and they warned that to achieve the same feat at optical wavelengths would require an extremely difficult leap in miniaturisation.
Now, Yijun Feng, a physicist from Nanjing University, China, and colleagues are trying a new approach that significantly reduces the complexity of the cloaking fabric.
Archive for September, 2007
Cloaking Device Activate
Sunday, September 16th, 2007Tuesday, September 11th, 2007
Six years ago today I woke up five minutes before my alarm set for 9am. Not really sure why. Shower then getting dressed and “What is that? I didn’t know there were earthquakes in New York.”
It was a perfect blue sky day. The gray drizzle and cold soft light today seems far more appropriate. A hole in the sky four blocks away when I stepped out onto John Street.
I wonder how many of these will be posted today. Remembrances of the time when a nation lost its innocence and power hungry men took the advantage abusing a nation and a world of its good faith for their own gain.
How many more of these must be written before we can regain the hope and dreams we gave up for a false sense of security?
It is a sad day. Not only for the loss that occurred then, but for the continued losses. The deaths of children in Iraq, bloody faced orphans. The loss of our own liberties, the very justification for these terrible interventionist wars. This Orwellian nightmare haunts us more waking than asleep where truth become lies and “freedom” is in fact slavery.
This is why the Desert is Amazing
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007
Its just like in the movies, but a little more colorful
Monday, September 10th, 2007
Foreground/Background
Wednesday, September 5th, 2007
Spaced Out
Wednesday, September 5th, 2007The world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport will be a “green” building rising out of the desert of New Mexico, US, according to plans made public on Tuesday.The designers of Spaceport America opted for a “low-lying, organic shape” that they say will blend into the surrounding landscape while conveying “the thrill of space travel”.
The spaceport will be the headquarters of Virgin Galactic, which will begin test flights of its passenger spaceliner, SpaceShipTwo, in 2008 and aims to be taking paying passengers to the edge of space by 2010.
The 9300-square-metre, $31 million facility features a circular terminal topped with an undulating concrete roof and flanked by berms of earth rising out of the desert.
Visitors will enter the spaceport through a channel cut in the landscape, walking between retaining walls covered with exhibits on the history of the area and of space exploration. They will be able to look down on spacecraft parked in the hangar and watch them rolling down the runway through the terminal’s expansive windows.
“It’s really science fiction becoming reality,” says David Wilson, a spokesperson for the New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA). “We think it’ll become a destination people want to come and see even if they’re not one of the passengers to space.”
