Scientists Take Step Towards Invisibility Cloak

From the International Tribune:

By John Schwartz The New York Times

Published: October 20, 2006

Invisibility has long been the stuff of fantasy, from Plato's story of the ring of Gyges to Harry Potter's mischief-enabling cloak. But scientists led by a team at Duke University have demonstrated a technology that could be a small step in the right misdirection.

The system, a set of concentric copper circles on fiberglass board, deflects electromagnetic waves of a specific frequency that strike it, without much of the scattering and absorption that make reflections and shadows.

A result is that the microwaves slide around the structure like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream, said David Smith, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke and an author of the paper published today in the journal Science.

The exact structure of the circles was described in an earlier paper by Sir John Pendry of Imperial College in London, who worked with the Duke group to see his theory etched into a working model by means of the process used to print circuit boards. In the recent paper, researchers said they had successfully cloaked a copper cylinder.

The findings were first reported in The Sun, a British newspaper. "Boffin Invents Invisibility Cloak," the headline stated, using the British slang for a research scientist.

Enthusiasts have already suggested that the technology may someday be useful for the military to create objects that are invisible to radar or to shield equipment from cellphone signals.

But Smith warned against getting ahead of the day's announcement and envisioning the disappearing Romulan warbirds of "Star Trek" on the horizon. The work "is really a scientific explanation," he said, adding, "Whether it's useful is always a question."

Creating a cloaking device in the visible spectrum would be vastly more complex, he said, since the device would have to warp all of the wavelengths of light. The chance of creating such a device is "dim," he said, but, "The theory doesn't prevent it from an electromagnetic point of view."

Businesses are already looking at possible applications, said Nathan Myhrvold, a former chief technology officer of the Microsoft Corporation whose company, Intellectual Ventures, explores the potential of new inventions.

"We hope it's got some commercial potential," Myhrvold said. "It could easily take years to figure out what the stuff is really good for from a practical, pragmatic standpoint. But, boy, it sure is really cool from a short-term standpoint."

Meteor Destroys German Cottage

From the Toronto Star:

Oct. 20, 2006. 12:05 PM

REUTERS

BERLIN — A fire that destroyed a cottage near Bonn and injured a 77-year-old man was probably caused by a meteor and witnesses saw an arc of blazing light in the sky, German police said today.

Burkhard Rick, a spokesman for the police in Siegburg east of Bonn, said the fire gutted the cottage and badly burned the man's hands and face in the incident on Oct. 10.

"We sought assistance from Bochum observatory and they noted that at that particular moment the earth was near a field of meteoroid splinter and it could be assumed that particles had entered the atmosphere," he said.

"The particles usually don't reach the surface because they disintegrate in the atmosphere," he added. "But some can make it to the ground. We believe this was a bolide (meteoric fireball) with a size of no more than 10 mm."

Fossil of giant sea reptile found on Arctic island

From the Toronto Star:

Creature's head was two metres long

Oct. 5, 2006. 02:51 PM

ASSOCIATED PRESS

OSLO, Norway — The remains of a prehistoric reptile that was ``as long as a bus, with teeth larger than cucumbers ... in a head that could swallow an adult human whole," have been discovered on an Arctic island, Norwegian researchers said Thursday.

The University of Oslo's Natural History Museum said researchers on the remote Svalbard islands had discovered the remains of a short-necked plesiosaur, a prehistoric marine reptile. It is believed to be the first complete plesiosaur skeleton ever found.

The 150-million-year-old remains of the 10-metre-long ocean-going predator were found in August.

Fragments of plesiosaur have been found elsewhere, including in England, Russia, and Argentina, but researcher Joern Harald Hurum said the partially fossilized Svalbard find appeared to be the first whole example.

"We are quite sure it is complete," he said by telephone about the partially buried fossils. "We have the head, and can see about six metres of vertebrae before it disappears into the ground."

Hurum said the voracious plesiosaurs were like the Tyrannosaurus Rex of the oceans, "except its head is much bigger, about two metres long, compared to about 1.6 metres for Tyrannosaurus Rex."

Hurum said his team plans return to Svalbard, 500 kilometres north of Norway's mainland, to continue excavations next year.

Twenty-seven other marine reptiles were also found during a two-week expedition: 21 long-necked plesiosaurs, sea reptiles similar to drawings of the Loch Ness monster, and six ichthyosaurs, reptiles that looked like fish and had fins.