Cloaking upon us

Funded, of course, by War Inc.

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, whose work is funded by the American military, have engineered materials that can control light’s direction of travel. The world’s two leading scientific journals, Science and Nature, are expected to report the results this week.

It follows earlier work at Imperial College London that achieved similar results with microwaves. Like light, these are a form of electromagnetic radiation but their longer wave-length makes them far easier to manipulate. Achieving the same effect with visible light is a big advance.

Underlying the work is the idea that bending visible light around an object will hide it.

Xiang Zhang, the leader of the researchers, said: “In the case of invisibility cloaks or shields, the material would need to curve light waves completely around the object like a river flowing around a rock.” An observer looking at the cloaked object would then see light from behind it – making it seem to disappear.

credit: Times Online UK

08-08-08

And apart from the fact that the date itself looks cool (it could have been perfect for the apocalypse) in the technology world, 8/8/8 is also special for other reasons:

1876 - Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph, a precursor of the photocopier.
1908 - Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France. It's the Wright Brothers' first public flight and the French public goes wild.
1910 - The US Army installs the first tricycle landing gear on the Army's Wright Flyer.
1929 - The German airship Graf Zeppelin begins a round-the-world flight.
1946 - First flight of the Convair B-36. The B-36 was the largest mass-produced piston engined aircraft ever made and the biggest wingspan combat aircraft ever built.
1974 - Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon announces his resignation, effective the next day.
1989 - Space Shuttle program: STS-28 Mission - Space Shuttle Columbia takes off on a secret five-day military mission.

credits: Gawker/Gizmodo

It's the last one that makes me go "wha?"