Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
(Image Source: DesignBoom)
BY JASMINE BAILEY
If you could have any superpower what would it be? Surely you've heard that question before
but what would you choose? Flying, superhuman strength, mind control? What about invisibility?
Researchers at Purdue University have developed, well, an invisibility cloak. And, yup, its
effects are pretty similar to this — except they don't quite work the same. (Via Youtube
/ Warner Bros. Pictures)
According to LiveScience this new version of the invisibility cloak creates holes in
time that hide data. Researchers found, "by tweaking the optical signals in telecommunications
fibers, they created a way to essentially mask data sent between a sender and a receiver
to outside observers."
Put more simply, it manipulates rays of light.
The lead researcher told ABC: "'Say you have a light beam...speed up the front half and
slow down the back half, and you create a place where the light beam splits apart. There
is no light intensity there.' ... When data is sent it makes a record in a light beam.
'If you send a piece of data, but the light beam isn't there, you can't make the record.
So if someone depicts the absence of light they will think no data was sent.'"
Another researcher talked to the BBC and said to think about it in terms of a flowing
river.
Basically, it's like taking a region of a river and diverting it to create holes where
there isn't any water — like a dam. (Via National Geographic)
"If we part the water so it doesn't see the dam popping up and down, it isn't disturbed,
and afterwards we can put the water back together so it looks like a nice calm river again.
That's how we control the flow of the light. We're pushing it forward and backwards in
time, so it avoids events that would otherwise disturb it."
But one downfall of the cloak is that it only works in one direction. If it is seen from
another point of view, the device is revealed. (Via The Guardian)
Researchers hope the headway they've made in the ever present attempt to create invisibility
could have profound effects not only here on Earth but up in space as well.
The cloaks might one day be able to hide satellites in mid to high Earth orbit. Also, "the device
could have important implications for sending secret messages via fibre optic cables. It
can hide a continuous stream of events at telecommunications data rates - much quicker
than a similar invention unveiled last year." (Via Daily Mail)
The research for this latest invention was published in the journal, Nature.