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Poll: Young people who use landlines are more conservative than those who use mobile phones
This is incredibly cool: A group of engineers and mathematicians have built a device that renders an object invisible to waves of water.
Last month, I blogged about the ever-more-surreal research into “invisibility cloaks” (including some Chinese guys who invented anti-invisibility technology). As you may recall, the invisibility cloaks all work by hacking the wave nature of light. The cloak consists of a round barrier around an object that takes incoming waves of light — microwave or visible — and reforms them, almost perfectly, on the other side of the barrier. Since the waves coming out have the same shape as the waves going in, presto: The object becomes invisible.
So: If this works with waves of light, could it work with waves of water? Apparently so. This new group of researchers, based in the UK and Europe, created the round metal barrier above, which reformats waves. As the New Scientist reports:
It may look like waves could pass easily along the radial corridors to the cloak’s centre. But they interact with the pillars, producing forces that pull water along the concentric corridors instead.“Basically, the cloak behaves like a whirlpool,” says Sebastian Guenneau at the University of Liverpool, UK, and a member of Enoch’s team. “The further you go into the whirlpool, the faster you rotate.”
The spinning rate increases close to the cloak’s centre where the concentric corridors are narrower, making the forces greater, he explains.
As the water whizzes around the cloak, the waves are flung out again along the radial corridors. “If you imagine water entering the cloak from the north, some leaves the cloak to the east, and some leaves to the west, but most is thrown out at the south,” says Guenneau.
The waves exiting the cloak travel as if they have not been disturbed at all, he says.
The question is whether these devices could be used to protect objects moored at sea, like oil rigs or those crazy artificial islands off the coast of Dubai.
(Thanks to Morgan Noel for this one!)
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
New technique renders objects at sea “invisible” to waves of water
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» visit the Collision Detection archives
September 26, 2008 » 01:57 PM
From an interview with ethnobotanist and anthropologist Wade Davis:
One of the cultures you celebrate in Light at the Edge of the World is the Inuit. What do you most admire about them?
Davis: The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his tools and all of his implements, thinking that would force him into the settlement. But instead, he just slipped out of an igloo on a cold Arctic night, pulled down his caribou and sealskin trousers, and defecated into his hand. As the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of an implement. And when the blade started to take shape, he put a spray of saliva along the leading edge to sharpen it. That’s when what they call the “shit knife” took form. He used it to butcher a dog. Skinned the dog with it. Improvised a sled with the dog’s rib cage, and then, using the skin, he harnessed up an adjacent living dog. He put the shit knife in his belt and disappeared into the night.
September 25, 2008 » 11:21 AM
“Video from a camp north of Toronto in December 2005 shows a car spinning around in a nearby, snow-covered parking lot. Prosecutors characterized that as special driver training but the defense, and many outsiders, said it was nothing more than “cutting doughnuts,” a favorite winter pastime of young Canadian motorists.” - A key piece of evidence submitted in the trial of a gang of alleged young Canadian terrorists.
September 24, 2008 » 11:21 PM
“Life imitates art imitating life: just thought a gnat crawling across my monitor was part of a Flash-based ad. I clicked it.” - A Tweet from Bill Braine.
September 24, 2008 » 02:37 PM
“Funniest FB friend request ever: “Twitter friend hoping to get to second base (Facebook!) ;-).”” - A recent Tweet by Pistachio
September 24, 2008 » 12:28 PM
Chinese powdered-milk crisis creates a new market: The return of the wet nurse
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