Small particles; Big news

Posted on Thursday, August 14, 2008 at 2:01pm (PDT)

bbc-logo-cloaking

For years, we believers knew that it was just a matter of time until cloaking was a reality. Today sees a tremendous psychological step forward in the quest to bring about the next generation of technologies. A major news organization, for the first time I have ever seen, mentioned cloaking technology without any appositions relating to its newness or once-thought-impossibility.

This is from the BBC's article "'Slow' light to speed up the net":

The optical properties of metamaterials are accomplished by design—which is why they are touted for use in cloaking—and they can be engineered to deliberately slow light down.

That is cloaking mentioned as though it were a common, everyday process. It does not read "theoretical-cloaking" or "cloaking, the technology of Star Trek and Harry Potter." And that's awesome. Cloaking is now part of the story, not the story itself.

The technology is not perfect yet and there is still a lot more of the EM spectrum to cloak, but what an awesome step towards those Star Trek technologies. (And for those of you recognizing that this type of EM cloak would still be susceptible to sonar, check out this link to a related BBC story.)

Keep watching news headlines for awesome new toys! We are entering a new age of optics (and computing, and medicine, and propulsion, and more!) as science continues to push smaller and deeper into the secrets of our world!

• bbc-cloak-story.jpg (.013 MB) - "bbc-logo-cloaking"

Keywords: technology; cloaking; star trek