Actual Disappearing Planes

Minadin

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Minadin
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I wasn't sure if this should go under the science forum or not, but given the relationship to some of the conspiracy claims we've seen thrown around, I thought this article was interesting:

A real invisibility cloak is within our grasp.

A group of engineers at Purdue University in Indiana have now used those calculations to design a relatively simple device that ought to be able to - one day soon - make objects as big as an airplane simply disappear.
Click to expand...

Even though they are only just now starting to work on a device that will make this sort of thing possible, and it doesn't work yet, I can't help but think that this sort of technology would be (or would have been) useful to some of the more far-out theories, such as Merc and Lyte's Pentagon flyover.

So, I was wondering what some of you all thought about this - both about the technology itself, if it will / can work, how it could / would be used - and also about how it will effect what we see as far as conspiracy theories.
 
some CTers like morgan reynolds already say such a device was used on 9/11

since th emilitary is always more advanced than the civilian market its perfectly concievable that they might have access to technology that hasnt been invented yet
 
If you actually read into the article re: this technology, there's no way it could be applied to achieve the theories spouted by CTers.

Bear in mind... people very close to the event claim they saw a 757 fly into the Pentagon and explode.

If a 757 flew towards The Pentagon, abruptly vanished, and then there was an explosion, people would notice that.

-Gumboot
 
Minadin said:
So, I was wondering what some of you all thought about this - both about the technology itself, if it will / can work, how it could / would be used - and also about how it will effect what we see as far as conspiracy theories.
Click to expand...

As far as I understand the concept, it uses a 3-D array of shaped microfilaments to vary the effective refractive index around an object to create a lensing effect so that light cannot impinge on a central region, so the result would be that no light can be scattered from an object in that region - in other words, it couldn't be seen. It's not clear from the article whether there would be any limitation on the range of viewing directions from which the invisibility would be effective. If we assume that it's possible to create a system in which viewing would be impossible from any direction, I can see three obvious problems with its application in anything like a 9/11 no-plane scenario.

1. Since the device works by preventing light coming into the central region, this means that an airliner within that region will be completely blind. Maybe radar sensing could be used for direction, but without any forward view in the visible part of the spectrum will that be good enough to hit the target?

2. Since the device is an array of solid objects, its optical properties are fixed - it can't be turned off and on. It couldn't conceivably be used to render abruptly invisible a previously visible object - in other words, you couldn't use it to make a plane suddenly disappear. It's not unthinkable that the optical properties might be electrically controlled, but then the electrical contacts would have to be transparent as well as the microfilaments, and the refractive index modulation would have to be unrealistically large; I don't think it would be feasible.

3. It would have to be larger, probably much larger, than the object it was cloaking, and probably spherical. Either it's a free-standing array of microfilaments, in which case the effect of 500mph slipstream isn't exactly going to be minor, or it's encased in some solid support medium, in which case (a) the jet exhaust can't get out and (b) the plane is no longer plane-shaped, it's invisibility-device-shaped. Spheres don't generate a lot of lift, so it won't fly.

I'd hesitate to write this off totally without more idea of how it works, but at a first look it seems way beyond total impossibility.

Dave
 
Oops, I got that wrong - they're metal filaments. That means the refractive index can't be varied significantly, so the cloak definitely can't be turned on or off. The whole idea is a non-starter.

Dave
 
Dave Rogers said:
Oops, I got that wrong - they're metal filaments. That means the refractive index can't be varied significantly, so the cloak definitely can't be turned on or off. The whole idea is a non-starter.

Dave
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Also whether this can be used to make anything invisible to the human eye is a long way off still.

Last I checked the device they had was only able to make an object invisible to microwaves - not yet to the visible spectrum of light. And only in two-dimensions, not yet three.

While this means they now have a workable theory behind invisibility, microwaves havea significantly longer wavelength than visible light, and the size of the parts required to make an object "invisible" to a certain spectrum is directly related to the wavelength of that spectrum.

Theoretically this can be done with small parts. VERY small parts. Microscopic. But then at such small scales there may be problems that don't occur at the large scale that crop up.

Having said that, it sure would be cool...only if you put down your invisibility cloak you'd be hard pressed to ever find it again.
 
defaultdotxbe said:
some CTers like morgan reynolds already say such a device was used on 9/11

since th emilitary is always more advanced than the civilian market its perfectly concievable that they might have access to technology that hasnt been invented yet
Click to expand...

Is it? Very often the military is a generation or two behind on modern equipment. A lot of kids get out of the Army and find they've been training on something the public sector stopped using 10-15 years ago.
 
Purdue is a joke. Did you know that you have to drive through a swampy trailer park to get there?
 
I don't really see how that would make the academic endeavors of the institution a joke. Did you go to a rival school, or something? There were trailor parks within a few miles of the university I graduated from, but, as far as I can tell, it has not seriously impacted their scholarly reputation.
 
Thinking about this and some of the CTs around 9/11, I can't see how it applies. Wouldn't the CTs need something that made a plane appear where there wasn't one, rather than having a real plane that disappears?
 
Once again reminding people that this has only been done to make an object invisible in two dimensions with microwaves, not visible light.

Let us not get ahead of ourselves, people!
 
a short story about "theres poverty in them thar hills'

chippy said:
Purdue is a joke. Did you know that you have to drive through a swampy trailer park to get there?
Click to expand...

Minadin said:
I don't really see how that would make the academic endeavors of the institution a joke. Did you go to a rival school, or something? There were trailor parks within a few miles of the university I graduated from, but, as far as I can tell, it has not seriously impacted their scholarly reputation.
Click to expand...

back in 1969 the family was driving to Athens Ohio to Ohio University for orientation for my sister. Now my father had this navigation habit of finding the most direct route between two points regardless of the road conditions being an interstate, a state highway, a county road. a gravel road or even someones dirt driveway. If dear old dad saw it on a map he took it. So this of course meant we approached Athens directly from the east. My big sister back then was the spoiled Blondie image conscious academic cheer-leading type. About I would say ten miles east of Athens things started to get ugly. Not that we were lost, dad knew where he was going but if you knew anything about Appalachia back then the neighborhood definitely changed for the worse the closer we got to our destination. We were "almost there" he said encouragingly. When we started to see wooden shacks (not even trailers)with barefoot children playing in the dirt, A scene which looked like it came straight out of the movie Deliverance. Sis panicked! Forget Ohio U she wasn't going there!! Turn back dad! she yelled. the worse the neighborhood got the more visibly and vocally disturbed she got. I guess she thought Ohio U held its classes in some general store in Hooterville. As we descended from the mountain and saw Athens it was like shangri-la and the emerald city all wrapped into one. The story had a happy ending. She stopped panicking when she saw how beautiful and civilized Athens was. She enrolled there. Met her future husband there. Graduated and eventually taught those same dirt floor shack children from the hills to the east how to read when she became a teacher in Athens. Sis never left Ohio. And both her and her husband still teach in Ohio to this day. But i still remember that first trip out there like it was yesterday
 
kookbreaker said:
Is it? Very often the military is a generation or two behind on modern equipment. A lot of kids get out of the Army and find they've been training on something the public sector stopped using 10-15 years ago.
Click to expand...
in truther world the military always has the best toys, got 'em from that UFO in roswell ;)
 
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