Just privately, and it was many years ago. I have quite a lot of things like
that -- three bound volumes, actually. Everything from intelligent night
vision targeting systems to ballistics to I-don't-remember. I used them to put
ideas in while I was working on my primary project, which was a light automatic
rifle made almost entirely of plastic (mineral-reinforced Zytel nylon). This
was well before Steyr developed the AUG (the weird looking rifle used in Die
Hard), and it still has better features than anything on the battlefield today.
When David was born I had a big change of heart about such things, hence the
change of vocation.
Respectfully,
Adam Phillip Churvis
Certified Advanced ColdFusion MX 7 Developer
BlueDragon Alliance Founding Committee
Get advanced intensive Master-level training in
C# & ASP.NET 2.0 for ColdFusion Developers at
ProductivityEnhancement.com
----- Original Message -----
From: Dana Tierney
To: CF-Community
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:51 PM
Subject: Re: I want one
did you ever write it up?
curious
Dana
> Military contractors have actually been working on something like this
> for a little while now, but using a simpler model of optical
> receptor/repeater using fiber optics for transmission. They think the
> effect at its best would be much like what you saw in the movie
> Predator. Nothing to show off just yet; so far it's just
> proof-of-concept stuff.
>
> Many years ago I theorized what I called "Microisoluminescence." Back
> before WWII the Allies figured out that it was possible to roughly
> camouflage aircraft by placing headlights on the leading edges of
> wings, so that when they divebombed the enemy, the light values of the
> aircraft and the surrounding bright sky were close to one another.
> They called this "Isoluminescence," and it was really crude but it
> worked pretty well. Sounds about as weird as what we did painting
> highly visible black and white angled lines on ships at sea to lessen
> their visibility, but that worked, too.
>
> My idea was to forego the complexities of actual image transmission in
> favor of simply varying the face of an object using light values
> roughly similar to (and slightly amplified above) the light values on
> the opposite face of the object, and to implement them in a rather
> fine-grained fashion, say a half-inch grid of transmitters -- hence
> the "Micro."
>
> At first it sounds crazy, like you'd be able to see a thing cloaked
> like that coming a mile away, but it turns out that isoluminescence
> can fool the eye a lot more than you might think. Oncoming cars on a
> gray rainy day are a lot harder to see when they have their lights off.
> Simply making an object's light values roughly the same as its
> surroundings can go a long way toward making you miss it until it's
> right up on you.
> Respectfully,
>
> Adam Phillip Churvis
> Certified Advanced ColdFusion MX 7 Developer
> BlueDragon Alliance Founding Committee
>
>
>
> Get advanced intensive Master-level training in
> C# & ASP.NET 2.0 for ColdFusion Developers at
> ProductivityEnhancement.com
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Dana Tierney
> To: CF-Community
> Sent: Saturday, May 27, 2006 8:54 PM
> Subject: I want one
>
>
> Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak Is Possible, Studies Say
> May 26 (Bloomberg) -- The creation of an invisibility cloak like the
> one used by Harry Potter in J.K. Rowling's books is theoretically
> possible, scientists said in two studies published by the online
> Science Express journal.
>
> The key to making an object invisible is to surround it with a cloak
> made of ``metamaterials'' that are engineered to bend light around an
> object, continuing on the other side in the same direction as before,
> Ulf Leonhardt, author of one of the studies, said in a telephone
> interview. Sound waves, which have a longer wavelength than light, can
> be distorted in such a way, and light bends naturally in mirages, for
> instance, he said.
>
> ``All one has to do is enhance this bending effect and control it
> better,'' said Leonhardt, Professor of theoretical physics at the
> University of St. Andrews in Scotland. ``We've given recipes of how to
> do this. You have to control structures that are smaller than the
> wavelength of light -- less than half a micrometer,'' he said. A
> micrometer is a millionth of a meter.
>
> The authors of the papers set out mathematical requirements for a
> theoretical metamaterial, that could achieve invisibility.
> Applications include protecting structures from vibrations, sound and
> seismic waves, improving wireless communications, seeing through
> obstructions, and hiding objects, David Schurig, a scientist at Duke
> University, North Carolina, and co-author of the second paper, said in
> a statement.
>
> ``The cloak would act like you've opened up a hole in space,'' another
> co-author, David Smith, professor of electrical and computer
> engineering at Duke, said in the statement. ``All light or other
> electromagnetic waves are swept around the area, guided by the
> metamaterial to emerge on the other side as if they had passed through
> an empty volume of space.''
>
> `Broadband Cloak'
>
> The cloaking device posited by the Duke scientists and the paper's
> third co-author, Professor John Pendry at Imperial College London,
> would cover the entire light spectrum and other lines of force, such
> as magnetic fields, Imperial said in an online statement.
>
> ``Ours would be a broadband cloak,'' Pendry said in the statement.
> ``There would be no communication between the object that is cloaked
> and the outside world.''
>
> Translating the math into a metamaterial that works isn't easy,
> Leonhardt said, describing his proposal as more ``modest'' than
> Pendry's.
>
> ``If you relax the requirement of perfection in the invisibility, we
> can have much more modest requirements of the material,'' he said.
> ``If you're happy with a slight haze, or even things you can't really
> perceive with the naked eye, but you can with instruments,'' then it's
> easier to make, he said.
>
> `Spacewarp'
>
> The two Duke scientists are now working on building the proposed
> material, and the first device would be a few millimeters across,
> according to Imperial College. When built, a final theoretical device
> would have just the same effects as the magical cloak in J.K.
> Rowling's books, the British school said.
>
> ``Just as in the Harry Potter film, nobody would be able to see an
> object if it was cloaked, as it's in a spacewarp, and that's exactly
> what our stuff would do,'' Pendry said.
>
> The two papers, ``Controlling Electromagnetic Fields'' by Pendry,
> Schurig and Smith, and ``Optical Conformal Mapping,'' by Leonhardt,
> were published yesterday by Science Express, the online advance
> publication of the journal Science. The Duke/Imperial research was
> supported by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
>
>
>
> To contact the reporter on this story:
> Alex Morales in London at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Last Updated: May 26, 2006 08:11 EDT
>
> http://www.bloomberg.
> com/apps/news?pid=10000082&sid=a5w0Bet0kOE4&refer=canada
>
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