7/15/2008

Dream of invisibility

Progress in this area are reported with excitement by several defence agencies. Some already funded studies on new materials capable of making invisible to ios soldiers.

na night December 1940, the engineer Edmund Godfrey Burr, in the service of the Canadian Navy, had a disconcerting experience.

As I watched with a binocular an airplane landing, saw him disappear so unexpected. After much thought, came to understand what had happened.
What was observing was the plane's black profile against the background of the sky.

The runway was covered with snow. The moonlight reflected from the surface illuminated white sea skimming the plane, eliminating the contrast with the brightness of the sky, causing the plane to be made invisible to their eyes.

The experience of Burr began a series of experiments whose aim was approaching craft with a light of the same intensity that the widespread in the sky.
Thus, its profile would be indistinguishable in night flights.

The evidence came to reduce by up to 75% visibility of the craft, but to advance the war, the priorities of the Canadian Navy changed and the trials were interrupted in 1943.
However, the military have never stopped dreaming of invisibility. One of the keys of war is not being seen by the enemy.
The concealment and masking of troops and equipment moving million in the research of the most powerful armies.

One of the most relevant results in this field is the Stealth technology. Machinery equipped with it have a color, shape, noise, electronic and thermal controlled so that it is very difficult to detect with radar.

What is clear is that the concealment total change in sight wars. "I suspect that the military are already working on the invisibility through the metamaterials", warning Ulf Leonhardt.

Indeed, some teams already receive funding from the British Navy, Army and the U.S. also is investigating military applications of these compounds.

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