Keven Posted January 8, 2004 Share Posted January 8, 2004 Do you think it is possible to be able to bend light around yourself thus making you invisible? I recentaly saw a comercial for a laser level which said that it used light refraction technoligy to project a laser line up to 50ft. Thats beliveable, but then it continued to say that it could even bend around corners, they showed it and everything. This comercial was on the Spike Network, channel 39 on normal cabel. I know this may sound crazy, but I swear I saw the comercial, If you see it too please let me know. If this is true, then couldn't we use this technoligy to refract light around an object, mind you this diagram is crude but it gets the point across. Ignore the periods, they are there only to make the diagram form properly once posted .............................................(2) ............................................XXX ............................................./.\ ............................................/...\ .........................................../.....\ .(light beams)...............(1)./.......\.(4) ===============XXX<.........>XXX===== ..........................................\......./ ...........................................\...../ ............................................\.../ .............................................\./ ............................................XXX ............................................(3) numbers 1-4 represent light bending machines, useing reversed and reconstructed laser level. The single / and \ repersent beams of light that are being redirected. If you cannot read it properly, copy it and paste it into word and remove the periods and make the lines line up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayson Posted January 8, 2004 Share Posted January 8, 2004 im sure if you could indeed do that, the most you would appear is translucent. what you see is not light being given off by objects, such as objects behind you, but light reflected off of things, everything. you would still see the light being reflected off of you, except that you would no longer block the light from behind you being reflected to you... so you would see both images. you would have to do something to make this work, like block any and all light from getting to you somehow. only way i can see is with extreme gravitational forces. Gravity has been proven to bend light. Much the same(but opposite) way that static electricity can bend a stream of water from a faucet. i spose if you could bend light liek this, you would have a field strong enough that (assuming you rigged up a way for it to not kill you) it would bend the light enough to make you invisable, and you wouldnt need the lasers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hephaestus Posted January 8, 2004 Share Posted January 8, 2004 I dont believe you can make an object invisible with the bending light technique without inadvertently causing it to leave space time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesAnthony Posted January 8, 2004 Share Posted January 8, 2004 I dont believe you can make an object invisible with the bending light technique without inadvertently causing it to leave space time. Are you referring to the Philidelphia Experiment? Otherwise I can't exactly see your reasoning. If light were to bend around you, you would simply be oblivious to the fact that there was light at all - no light would hit your retina. It would be like been in a dark, windowless room. An observer would be oblivious to the fact that you were there(if it was perfect) or you would look like the Predator or something Nevertheless, interaction between you and the universe should still occur on the other senses. If light had the funtion of 'holding' objects in real time then the possibilities of exploiting this feature would be fantastic. James Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RainmanTime Posted January 8, 2004 Share Posted January 8, 2004 Howdy, Actually, the easiest (and most straightforward to understand) means to make someone/something appear to be invisible is being worked-on by the hi-tech industry in conjunction with the US Army. It was described and shown on a Discovery/History Channel/TLC show awhile back: With the advent of nanotechnology...imagine a person wearing a uniform covered with lots of tiny light sensors and lots of tiny color LCDs. The light sensors are inputs to a wearable computer, and the LCDs are the outputs. Now assume someone is standing in front of you while you are wearing this "suit". The computer reads the light coming from behind you and hitting the sensors on your back. It processes that light into an image, and distributes that image as an output to the LCDs on the front of your suit. So the person looking at you sees (to a rough order of magnitude) exactly what the view is behind you that your body would normally obstruct. Of course, the design parameters that would affect the quality of the perceived "invisibility" are the size and number of LCDs used for projecting (i.e. overall resolution of display), and the distance from the observer to the person wearing the suit. Rumors of test results claim that the visual effect one sees is not terribly different from the way the Predator looked in the movie of the same name. Kind Regards, RainmanTime Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesAnthony Posted January 8, 2004 Share Posted January 8, 2004 Kinda like the principle for James Bond's car in Die Another Day - man, that made me cringe. James Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hephaestus Posted January 8, 2004 Share Posted January 8, 2004 I am indeed refering to the unproven Philadelphia experiment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mengy Posted January 8, 2004 Share Posted January 8, 2004 The eye can't see what the brain tells it not to see. I wouldn't know how this would be done but just a thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayson Posted January 9, 2004 Share Posted January 9, 2004 on this 'eye not seeing' subject, did you know each eye has a blind spot, you can actually see it, where the optical nerve bundle is. Your brain makes a guess as to what is sposed to be seen there so there isnt a black spot. http://nebula.physics.uakron.edu/~light/the_eye/blind_spot/blind_spot.html do this to see what i meen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShoeString Posted January 9, 2004 Share Posted January 9, 2004 In my humble opinion, the holy grail of 'invisiblity' will be rather more mundane. Light is merely EM radiation, as we all know. Certain geometries have been designed to render aircraft invisible to specific EM radiation, coupled with RAM (Radiation Asorbing Material) - the 'stealth planes' we have today. One day, a mixture of both geometry and descendants of RAM will include the visual spectrum without the need to actually bend light in some convoluted way. All that is required is to ensure the light does not reach your retina. - SST Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hephaestus Posted January 9, 2004 Share Posted January 9, 2004 Why bend light around your plane? the reason we see planes is because light hits the craft and bounces back and hits peoples eyes, but what if the plane merely absorbs all light therefore no light bounces off it therefore people wont see it. Also the plane could send out its own light fooling a person, for example the plane could send out light waves making the plane look like nothing more than the sky it is flying within. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesAnthony Posted January 9, 2004 Share Posted January 9, 2004 In my humble opinion, the holy grail of 'invisiblity' will be rather more mundane. Light is merely EM radiation, as we all know. Certain geometries have been designed to render aircraft invisible to specific EM radiation, coupled with RAM (Radiation Asorbing Material) - the 'stealth planes' we have today. One day, a mixture of both geometry and descendants of RAM will include the visual spectrum without the need to actually bend light in some convoluted way. All that is required is to ensure the light does not reach your retina. Why bend light around your plane? the reason we see planes is because light hits the craft and bounces back and hits peoples eyes, but what if the plane merely absorbs all light therefore no light bounces off it therefore people wont see it. You're both really talking about the same thing. The only problem is that with with rader, the spectrum we see is actually quite bland. We know something is there because the microwaves bounce of it and return to our station. Doing the same with visible light is different. Newton believed that what we saw was developed by invisible beams of light emitted from our eyes and then bounced back. If this was the case your ideas would work - unfortunately I think it's reasonable certain to say that Newtn was wrong on this count. If no light bounces off an object, it appears black - the light of whatever is behind it is visible around it. Also the plane could send out its own light fooling a person, for example the plane could send out light waves making the plane look like nothing more than the sky it is flying within. The parts of the plane sending out these waves wouldn't really be able to absorb the reflected... Or do you already have an idea how this can been done? James Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShoeString Posted January 9, 2004 Share Posted January 9, 2004 James, I stand corrected. I obviously am only an Newton-level intellect. Heh. - SST Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayson Posted January 9, 2004 Share Posted January 9, 2004 well, light absorbing paint.... you meen... ... flat black? because that *is* what you are talking about, you deffinatly see it, as the absence of color and light Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keven Posted January 9, 2004 Author Share Posted January 9, 2004 Thanks a bunch james, I didn't want to post just to explain that. If the light is headed toward you and you have a "device" that will bend it around your body and make it keep going in to same direction then you will be invisible to the human eye. It will not make you dissapear or shift to another plane or anything, you'll just be invisible. plain and simple. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iridium Posted January 9, 2004 Share Posted January 9, 2004 Keven...the laser in the commercial did not bend....the surface that the straight line was projecting onto bent. I have one of these lasers. It isn't anything special at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hephaestus Posted January 9, 2004 Share Posted January 9, 2004 The problem is this, in order to bend light around an object theres no knowing what other effects this bending might do, lets say you use a strong magnetic field to bend the light, this strong magnetic field may cause other effects that our current scientific knowledge wouldnt understand. Im not saying the philadelphia experiment is true or false but its a prime example showing something can happen when you dont expect it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hephaestus Posted January 9, 2004 Share Posted January 9, 2004 The parts of the plane sending out these waves wouldn't really be able to absorb the reflected... Or do you already have an idea how this can been done? Hmmm I didnt think hard enough and neglected to realise the obvious problem with absorbing light, that it would make the plane black. The second example I gave was to be seperate from the absorbtion capability, the surface of the plane would send out specific light beams mimicking the sky on the otherside of the plane and vise versa. Same as the idea of the prototype suit that I believe some japanese designed and built, it was capable of taking the light from behind the person and transmitting it out the front of the suit via I believe minute optic cables, the person wearing the suit appeared semi transparent. I will try and search the net for some info on this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keven Posted January 9, 2004 Author Share Posted January 9, 2004 Yea but the japnese probaly have giant fighting robots like Gundam Wing, lol. Wait a sec, a while back me and my friend were trying to build a giant fighting robot, or at least make plans for it but we came across many problems, would anyone like to help me solve some of these problems? 1. The arms and legs would be too big to be able to move fast enough to be of any use, so we need to find a way to move them faster while keeping the amount of armor needed to protect the internal systems. 2. They would not be very balenced so we would have to find a way to balence them out so they could run/walk. 3. The amount of progaming needed is beyond my abilty to make, so we need someone to cover that section of it. 4. we need to create a new metal or plastic that is lighter, harder, and can be built into sheets and used as armor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayson Posted January 10, 2004 Share Posted January 10, 2004 1. composite materials, maybe aluminum and titanium. carbon fiber 2. you can balance it well with clevar planning, that the easiest part of the puzzle. also think about gyro's 3. depends what you want. abio? 4. no you dont, there are many hard and light plastics and metals available. metal can almost always be obtained in sheets, or at least in bars and rolled into sheets. plastic too Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keven Posted January 10, 2004 Author Share Posted January 10, 2004 yes, but the strength needed to be able to carry all of the armements and strucabilty would need to by higher than any metal i knwo of know. Wha ti thought was what if we melted diamond and and say steel and mixxed them? would that make a new alloy that would be as strong as diamond yet pliable liek metel? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hephaestus Posted January 11, 2004 Share Posted January 11, 2004 Future planes more than likely will be constructed using carbon nano tubes, if for example a harrier jump jet was constructed in the future from such material it would be many several times lighter than what one would be today using current materials. For example a planes wing made from just simple carbon fibre wouldnt be as light as a plane wing constructed of a multitude of carbon nanotubing, also nanotubing is the ultimate carbon fibre in that its possibly the strongest form. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayson Posted January 11, 2004 Share Posted January 11, 2004 it might interest you to know that a lump of coal, a diamond, the 'lead' in a graphite pencil, are the same item. the differance between these items is their crystaline lattice. click this if you care to see some 'specs' on it http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Chemistry/MOTM/diamond/diamprop.htm these items are all composed of carbon, carbon is available in large quantities worldwide. and it is a required ingredient to make the metal we call steel. steel is an aloy look at this btw http://68.21.63.78/eng/material/steel/steel_carbon.htm diamond is the stiffest, hardest, least compressible(they are compressed coal more or less) it is the best known thermal conductor, and has a low thermal expansion. needless to say, you wont be melting them down. i know a enough about metals, but i wouldnt make any claims to say them to not be strong enough. Strength comes from design and engineering. You can also temper metal to make it harder. The harder you make it the more brittle it gets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayson Posted January 11, 2004 Share Posted January 11, 2004 another interesting property of diamond, is that its perfectly clear to all light from uv to infared Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keven Posted January 12, 2004 Author Share Posted January 12, 2004 Cool, Have any of you ever seen anepisode of Gundam Wing? if you have, what steps could we take to make a "mobile suit"? Nanotubing? please expand on that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts