Ninjitsu -- The Art Of Invisibility

Did you know scientists think they can render objects invisible in this modern age? This is done by bending the light around the object in question. What do you think about this innovation?

In the right hands, it'd only work for good but what if a serial killer or a terrorist got hold of one? Here's an excerpt:

Imagine an invisibility cloak that works just like the one Harry Potter inherited from his father. Researchers in England and the United States think they know how to do that. They are laying out the blueprint and calling for help in developing the exotic materials needed to build a cloak.

The keys are special manmade materials, unlike any in nature or the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. These materials are intended to steer light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation around an object, rendering it as invisible as something tucked into a hole in space.

"Is it science fiction? Well, it's theory and that already is not science fiction. It's theoretically possible to do all these Harry Potter things, but what's standing in the way is our engineering capabilities," said John Pendry, a physicist at the Imperial College London.

Details of the study, which Pendry co-wrote, appear in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science.

Scientists not involved in the work said it presents a solid case for making invisibility an attainable goal.

"This is very interesting science and a very interesting idea and it is supported on a great mathematical and physical basis," said Nader Engheta, a professor of electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Engheta has done his own work on invisibility using novel materials called metamaterials.

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FYI its already being done but not in the manner in which you imagine, it works by reflecting mirrored images on the opposite side of the item. if i can find the article or link i will post it

Cactus:

FYI its already being done but not in the manner in which you imagine, it works by reflecting mirrored images on the opposite side of the item. if i can find the article or link i will post it

I know what you mean. I just put a catchy title, that's all. The proposed prototypes are going to be very bulky. I understand that the US Department of Defense is very interested because it could mean additional 'stuff' for bombers like the B-2 -- and maybe for moving ground equipment.

What I'm saying is that should it ever get on the free market, it could be put to the wrong uses.

well, regardless if we like it or not it will get into public market. there will definitely be restrictions on the use restrictly government/millitary related since it will be extremely expensive to obtained initially. (this is going to be a deviation from your topic) however, thanks to nanotechnology you can easily achieve anything these days, ipod nano, xbox360, dockers khakis etc. I do wish all these nanotech, applications would be very limited but its not going to be.

Eventually, people will be useless, cyborgs are already in existence, I wouldnt be surprised if someday, anyone can take a disk (cd,dvd,memory stick etc) and put it directly into their brain (if i were educationally knowledgeable in the scientific field, I will definitely do some research in that aspect cos it fascinates me). That is definitely attainable since signals in the brain are electrical. then schooling will be useless each and everyone will be a walking google. That will definitely be awesome.

If you have not read this book, BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley,
its a good read. this is the link to the entire book. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/bravenew/

an overview and summary explanation http://www.huxley.net/

That book was written in 1932. You can imagine how close we are getting

Okay people are trying to restrict embryonic stem cell research bla bla bla well guess what, welcome in nasal stem cell. now there cannot be restrictions on using nasal stem cell since it regenerates and no life destruction/termination involved.

hopefully, we are smart enough to maintain our sanity.

Cactus, if someone else was reading it, he might think you're wacko . The possiblities of science and technology are endless. Someday, everything would work like The Matrix -- get plugged in and learn Juijitsu. I can't wait

I read it before, they want to use the same priciple as the harry potter Invisible cloack, Them and their imagination, but if its possible its only goin to cause conflict in the world today.

from cactus:

If you have not read this book, BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley,
its a good read. this is the link to the entire book. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/bravenew/

. . . i have that book at home. read it when i was 13 or so. like you said, we are getting there, little by little.

I'm not an expert, but I'm just wandering, mmmm, if yu deflect light round an object (bend light), what happens to the reflected light? Won't there be some sort of losses (energy dissipation) or distortion of the light. Won't it cause a hazzy, would it affect the colours of other objects it hits down stream to give away what it was hiding in the first place? mmmm??

very interesting response to my post at least this should get people interested in topics like this as for those of you that may consider me as wacko well its just my interest in topics/issues like this i monitor stories regarding nanotechnology closely, Augmented Reality(AR), and Artificial Intelligence(AI). Those are my areas of interests.
scientifically i lack formal education in these areas, I wish i had gone into college for Artificial intelligence. Such is life with college past now I may end up in one of those fields in Master/doctoral degree.

your light dissipation idea is similar to the stealth bomber. It all depends on the material used to build the object and angles of inclination.

You can read more on this link instead of me copying and pasting, using the B-2 bomber as an example
http://science.howstuffworks.com/stealth-bomber4.htm

***Yawnnnssss***

In thier dreams

These restless fools are testing God

Watch when He strikes them with His Mighty Hand

They want to know and do everything abi

bolex:

***Yawnnnssss***

In their dreams

These restless fools are testing God

Watch when He strikes them with His Mighty Hand

They want to know and do everything abi

Hmmm. I suppose you shouldn't even get into an airplane because only birds and angels are supposed to fly?

Zahy ma man

airplanes is different from this 1

invisible



That is crazy beyond imagination

Invisble is out of the world

They do not even need any research of whatever

They only need to join one or two witchcraft societies



dumboes

When human beings wanted to fly the first time they should have joined your favourite coven.

Honestly, they're just manipulating light -- anything wrong with that?

let's wait and see what can happen

manipulating light

have you ever thought of how possible it is for invisiblity to happen by human power ?

& no strings attached ?

think again , i beg you please think

i thought u were meant to be studying engineering @ bolex    and your mentioning God 

ur imagination has a limit mate!!<> you've got limited imagination 

me html learner

luverboi

I aint doubting da existence of God

& I aint going any limit cos of ma profession

ok ?

crap

imagine people seeing through you

your intenstine , bones , everything in thin air

what kinda of silly imagination is that

So many things are possible today that we could never imagine happening years ago, In the 1950s, could you imagine talking with someone across the oceans in real time, voice&video. today blind people can see relatively decent thanks to miniscule cameras implanted into their eyeballs or worn like glasses. http://rdu.news14.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=82612 . Deaf people hearing thanks to cochlear implants. My opinion as to why many people are not aware of these type of technologies is because currently they are extremely expensive only a handful of people have them. That limits public exposure in the media and awareness, except you watch tech tv, beyond tomorrow, or search online for information regarding issues like this.

The research and development of making objects including humans look invisible to the eye is as real as eating eba. Definitely certain people will be angry at such ideas, people that know its possible are very well aware of the advances in technology today. As for those who are still skeptics, well we all cant have the same opinions/feelings else nothing will be going on in the world if everyone agreed/disagreed on issues that affect their lives.

EVERYONE READING THIS TOPIC I REALLY URGE YOU TO WATCH THIS VIDEO ITS ABOUT 6MINUTES.

watch it and pour out your opinion. I believe people will start rethinking their opinion.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6523761027552517909&q=augmented+reality

@bolex: ease off man. . . it's not as if them scientists were blaspheming or shizzle like that. you talk about witches and invisibility. what about flying. it is supposed they can also fly. it's nothing other than another discovery in scienc, nothing else, to be harnessed for good, though we'll still have dumb bleeps using it for evil.



Now to everybody in General,
about this invisibility thingy, i had thought about it years ago. ok, ok. . .now this was my train of thought then:

Now, we all know light can be reflected (bounced back, kinda) and refracted (passing through) yada yada. and also how we see things of colour is because when light is concentrated on a particular object, it absorbs/refracts all other colours within the light spectrum and "reflects" back only the colour of that particular object at hand. so what i was thinking then was that, for something to be invicible, light has to be refracted through it, it has to absorb that light without reflecting it back. whatever colour the body has within the spectrum has to be refracted somehow. now this was where i stopped. i couldn't think of how it could be done.

. . .oh well, that's about it. i forgot all about this isht till this topic came up. either ways. that was what i was thinking about then.

damn . . .

these scientists never seize to amaze me

how da heck did they come up with that

anwyayz . . . av been in a simulator before and I think it was almost real

but wait

making objects invisible

DON'T YOU THINK THAT IS A BIT OF GOING TOO FAR ?

There are so many ways to go about making an object look invisible to the naked eye. Take for instanace, the sun emits different wavelengths, the human eye can only see a range of wavelengths called optical spectrum. Pretty much if u can apply the other wavelengths not visible to human eye and make an overcast or enable the object or person to emit the other wavelength or by some other means apply the non visible wavelength to an object, i believe it is possible.

as far as going to far, well personally i do feel its going to far but there is ideally nothing someone or a government can do to stop this form of research. governments will be extremely glad to have such technology to give them an upperhand in warfare and technological development

Using the human cloning research for example, some countries have regulations in place to limit the use/application of embryonic stem cell. Well good news or bad news, other forms of stem cell research are being carried out and there are other countries that do not have such regulations. All a scientist has to do is relocate and continue his/her work

all we have to do is sit back, relax and enjoy the ride

cactus,  :Dcactus,  i suppose instead of saying "the trash-heap has spoken" (fraggle rock) we shld be chanting "Sir Cactus has spoken".

But I believe u have raised serious points that lottsa folks from our backwater country would think 2ce about. Man, without trying to sound alarming, i think we on tha edge of seriously disturbing developments. And as usual, these discoveries would be imposssible to keep outta tha open market, even if tht suceeeds, wht about terrorists, covert operation units etc? 

Invisibility et al shldn't be tha only things worrying us, there are other stuffs on tha horizon, I suggest folks visit www.newscientist.com often and often to get ur hats knocked off.

dont believe too much in conspiracy theories but i'm beggining to fink there's a da vinci code under my mattress too  (lol)

bolex, mate i tink its time u wake up o! Se u don 4gat say bible said in Daniel 12 say in the end of times say "Knowlegde go increase and many shall run to and fro, ?", well, tht's one fer ya,

bolex:

damn . . .

these scientists never seize to amaze me

how da heck did they come up with that

anwyayz . . . av been in a simulator before and I think it was almost real

but wait

making objects invisible

DON'T YOU THINK THAT IS A BIT OF GOING TOO FAR ?

Dear Bolex. . .

I'm a Christian as well, but I believe that God encourages us to acquire knowledge and develop the abilities we lost with the fall.

If He doesn't want us to know it, we never will. Rest assured on that score.

But I think what restricts us is not so much God's unwillingness to reveal, but our limitations as humans.

'Now we see in part, we know in part also; then we shall see and know fully'.

I hope science does not take us to

THE DARK AGES

Mr Bolex,
If you pastor says her can make cancer disappear or invisible,you would shout praise the Lord.
I wonder how you got into engineering or maybe you are doing it because mummy dear wants you be an engineer.
Every technology that has seen the light of day has had its criticism,from airplanes,organ transplant,IVF,submarines etc
because God did not ordain it.On this site we have people who are holier than thou complaining abortions,but what
these people fail to realize is the West,Japan and China are prosperous because of all forms birth control which Africans reject
because its not biblical and koranic

HAHA

MR. MAYOR

not @ all

actually , the reason why I cnnot go into research projescts is that . . . I do not wanna be far from ma God



He knows what He does and when He does , He makes it perfect



By the way . . . Mayor , if you was aborted as a kid , am sure you would not be here today typing

I really think we should welcome any form of research that seeks to make our lives as individuals better . I had read aboutn the project in one os those TIMES mag on technology and I thought the process was rather too indefinite. The one I read had to do with a special 'fabric' that could show to a looking person the image that is directly at the back of the person being looked at.There are so many grey areas but they will acheive some mesaure of success.

It does not scare me in any way because, as someone said. it will be expensive and like the stealth car,the only place we may see it will be in James Bond movie.

Bolex, knowledge will increase.It is spelt out in the Bible. Thre is however a difference between knowledge and wisdom.Like Sewlyn Hughes said,man show his knowledge by traveling faster that light but show his lack of wisdom by going in the wrong direction!

@ cactus

why this that scientist break that thing @ the end of the video

besides

that is a simulation

what's up

we talking invisiblity



can you all think ? please

this is getting out of hand

well the demonstration in the video is aimed at using computing technology to project object in thin air, the cars, helicopter flying, buildings on the table, you cannot physically touch them (meaning your fingers will pass through the images/nonsolid) they are a images projected into thin air. the breaking part i feel its just an addition used in the presentation there is really nothing to the breaking.

what i am trying to get at is that today we have the power, knowledge to do things that were tot to be absolutely impossible to achieve. the augmented reality demonstration is target at several projects such as city development. instead of building cities and hoping for the best. using this technology demonstrated in the video, you can easily create the city for example in you living room, with people, cars, trucks, offices, skyscrapers to have a feel or where things should be then if u dont like it, just carry a building or item and place it where you deem fit. its all about the possibility of having the flexibility to make/create things the way we would like it to be.

if you can project images such as those in the video in thin air, then invisibility is absolutely possible

I heard about this on slashdot a while back. Apparently it is in the *seriously theoretical* stage.

Bending light will be good for making something invisible at a single angle, but how about at multiple angles? There is an almost infinite number of rays of light bouncing off an object at a given point- how do we account for all of them and not just those that will be relevant to a particular viewer?

I imagine that this will be useful in cloaking large, fast-moving objects , such as fighterplanes, from a given viewpoint. for example to conceal photographic evidence of a lowflying attack or a military insertion/extraction. The object will still be 'sort of' visible, but difficult to capture on film. Missiles could also be concealed in this way, not to make them difficult to evade (evasion systems nowadays don't rely on optical confirmation) but simply to enable the responsible government to deny their existence.

They could also be used to conceal the approach of a small team of crack troops from a certain angle- perhaps to allow for a surprise attack from a frontal angle?

really, the only uses I can think of for this tech are military.

and to Bolex- I always thought you were a luddite(anti-technology) , despite your claims to be an engineer, but now you have confirmed my suspicion. By the way, luddite is not meant as an insult, it simply describes your anti-technology stance, which by the way is a valid point of view. Technology has really done a lot of evil things but it has done good things as well. I'd love to have a discussion with you about the pros/cons of technology but am afraid I lack the energy. I do have one negative thing to say though: Why the hell do you choose to be an engineer? I think you would do better in the humanities or studying business/arts. The last thing we need is more engineers that do not believe in their works.

bolex,

softly softly o!

hear darkmanzero!

lemme make this clear to ya'll

engineers are different from scientists

engineers don't dare God

scientists do

You confusing ma profession with others

Engineers would not bother trying to make an object invisible

How silly is that

Imagine your computer going invisible

Plane , Cars and other technology are just challenges

Not daring God

like . . . gosh

Do you know what that means



INVISIBLE

I would really love to see them try

Besides . . . am an engineer . . . bite if that hurts

scientists do the thinking

engineers actually DO what scientists think about.

In your thiking, engineers are actually worse because they are the ones that will build the invisible aeroplane, they are the ones who will calculate the parameters to account for diffraction due to heat emission, point-of-view tracking, and all the 'dirty details' that will need to be worked out while implementing the scientists' ideas

abi what do you think all your bigbig maths textbooks are for. for fun?

planes and cars are daring God, too. God gave us horses. today we have cars with over 200 horse-power. Before aeroplanes, luddites like you used to say 'if God wanted man to fly, he would have given him wings'. God didnt give us wings. He only gave angels wings. Now we fly, too, on a daily basis in our aeroplanes, helicopters, vtols, hot air balloons, and a million other flying devices. I can communicate with you and a million other Nigerians using the internet without saying A WORD, but only moving my fingers around a WEIRD LOOKING PLASTIC BOARD WITH ARCANE GRECO-ROMAN SYMBOLS engraved on it, LOOKING INTO A GLASS/CRYSTAL TUBE that emits INVISIBLE RAYS! tell me if that doesnt sound like witchcraft!

If you don't believe in the science, you will be a terrible engineer, and in the long run you will regret your choice of profession. But I am sure that soon, you will learn to accept technology. Thus i have high hopes for ure future, Bolex!