In a breakthrough that could signal a new era for human technology, US and Chinese researchers announced on Thursday they are a step closer to creating an invisibility shield.
In a development made possible by advances in designing complex mathematical commands known as algorithms, engineers at Duke University, North Carolina, were able to create what they call “metamaterials.”
These materials can “guide electromagnetic waves around an object, only to have them emerge on the other side as if they had passed through an empty volume of space,” said the team, whose work was published in yesterday’s edition of the journal Science.
The cloaking phenomenon is similar to mirages seen at a distance on a hot day, senior researcher David Smith said.
“You see what looks like water hovering over the road, but it is in reality a reflection from the sky,” Smith said. “In that example, the mirage you see is cloaking the road below. In effect, we are creating an engineered mirage with this latest cloak design.”
The team, who were backed by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation of China among others, worked off their 2006 prototype that proved the project’s feasibility.
But Smith said their latest cloak is far superior to the original design.
“The new device can cloak a much wider spectrum of waves — nearly limitless — and will scale far more easily to infrared and visible light,” he said. “The approach we used should help us expand and improve our abilities to cloak different types of waves.”
The breakthrough has the potential of advancing numerous technologies that already exist and ideas that have yet to be devised.
“By eliminating the effects of obstructions, cloaking devices could improve wireless communications, or acoustic cloaks could serve as protective shields, preventing the penetration of vibrations, sound or seismic waves,” the team said.
The cloak, measuring 50.8cm by 10cm and less than 2.5cm high, is constructed with 10,000 fiberglass pieces arranged in parallel rows, 6,000 of which are unique.
The unique algorithms that can affect electromagnetic waves determined the shape and placement of each piece, the team said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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