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Thursday, October 19, 2006

Invisible Food for Thought.

Scientists Create Cloak of Invisibility
Yes, this posted today on a news link. Sounds like science fiction doesn't it. The emphasis in italics and bold are mine.
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Thursday, October 19, 2006
WASHINGTON - A team of American and British researchers has made a Cloak of Invisibility. Well, OK, it's not perfect. Yet. But it's a start, and it did a pretty good job of hiding a copper cylinder.
In this experiment the scientists used microwaves to try and detect the cylinder. Like light and radar waves, microwaves bounce off objects making them visible and creating a shadow, though it has to be detected with instruments.

If you can hide something from microwaves, you can hide it from radar - a possibility that will fascinate the military.
Cloaking differs from stealth technology, which doesn't make an aircraft invisible but reduces the cross-section available to radar, making it hard to track. Cloaking simply passes the radar or other waves around the object as if it weren't there, like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream.

The new work points the way for an improved version that could hide people and objects from visible light. Conceptually, the chance of adapting the concept to visible light is good, cloak designer David Schurig said in a telephone interview.

...Nonetheless...
Their first success is reported in a paper in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

And we think immediately of military applications!
It makes me think of the Star Trek phrase "Cowboy Diplomacy". It does seem that there is more of that floating around these days too.

I am indeed a science minded person. I simply want us to be cautious and extremely ethical with what we are doing.

Is that too much to ask? I think not.

Think first. Then act. Please.
Think Peace. Think Justice. Think Ecological Sustainability.

How will we harvest "invisible crops"? Or capture "invisible drug lords"?
And if one research group can do this, who is to say how many others will try their own versions?

Invisible Food for Thought.

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