News Penn State Researchers Develop Cloaking Device

[AutoAdmin]

A new news article has been published at TrekToday:

Look out Romulans; humans are currently working on a cloaking device. “Researchers at Penn State University created an underwater ground cloak capable...

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[Asbo Zaprudder]

That's fine and dandy as long as the Romulans attack us from under the surface of the sea. Might be useful for hiding ballistic missile subs and attack subs if it can be scaled up and made broad spectrum for sonar. In the shorter term, it could be useful for concealing monitoring stations and depth charge/torpedo/mine deployment stations (if the latter exist).

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Penn State is calling it the Sandusky Device, because it allows you to hide your most nefarious activities in plain sight.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Surely, the time lag between the path that the wave actually takes and the path that it would take were the cloaked object not there could be detected!?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

More info here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44058729

It looks like it would work in 2D only at the moment. Those big, flat side panels would surely be detectable by sonar. Re time lag, I assume the device corrects for phase shift and minimises attenuation or it wouldn't be a very good cloak.

 

[publiusr]

This may be better--at small scales at least
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-newly-effect-atoms-transparent-frequencies.html

A newly discovered phenomenon dubbed "collectively induced transparency" (CIT) causes groups of atoms to abruptly stop reflecting light at specific frequencies.