coast clear for invisibility cloak?

For now, the invisibility cloak remains a thing of science fiction

From BBC News, Thursday 20th August 2009

A physicist has said he hopes to make major advances in the field of invisibility in the next two years.

Professor Ulf Leonhardt at St Andrews University is working on a blueprint for a cloaking device that could also be used to shield coast lines.

The researcher, who cites the Invisible Woman and Harry Potter as inspiration, has been working on the concept of invisibility since 2006.

The project will focus on a connection between light and curved space.

Prof Leonhardt, who describes his invisibility work as “geometry, light and a wee bit of magic”, hopes to manipulate modern metamaterials – or “designer atoms” to create an invisibility device using the laws of refraction.

He believes that in bending light, transparent materials like glass or water appear to distort the geometry of space, which is the cause of many optical illusions, including invisibility.

‘Extreme ideas’

Prof Leonhardt said: “The idea of invisibility has fascinated people for millennia, inspiring many myths, novels and films.

“In 2006, I began my involvement in turning invisibility from fiction into science, and, over the next two years, I plan to develop ideas that may turn invisibility from frontier science into applicable technology.”

Although the professor admitted it was difficult to predict possible applications, he suggested invisibility research could be used to improve visibility, leading to the development of the perfect retroreflectors (cats eyes), better microscopes and improved lenses.

He added: “I will most certainly find easier ways of cloaking, but it remains to be seen how practical they are.

“The important thing is to understand the foundations and come up with something new or take an existing idea to extremes; using technology and ideas to make things happen – technology we cannot imagine would ever exist.”

The project is being funded by the Royal Society’s Theo Murphy Blue Skies Award.

kitty kat cornershot camo

I thought this was someone’s idea of a joke when I first saw it. But, no – the demonstrator in the video below is deadly earnest (not Deadly Ernest, the comic pro-wrestler from Manchester, UK, but instead, a very, very serious company man ).

Cornershot camo

Now, the Israeli Cornershot system is a useful ‘force multiplier’ for dismounted urban operations, but I guess that to those being observed  through its barrel mounted video system it is still obvious that a gun barrel is pointing at them from round the edge of a wall. Until someone came up with this unconventional idea…

Link

Thanks to F Gruenert/ICUS for the tip.

camouflage – the exhibition comes to Canada

Anyone who got to see the Camouflage exhibition at the Imperial War Museum a couple of years ago will appreciate what a treat is in store for those able to make it to the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa this summer. The IWM exhibition has travelled across the pond, and is set to inform and inspire new audiences young and old with its immersive display of concealment techniques, from their hand painted origins in the First World War through to the ultra-modern trend for uniforms designed and manufactured with the aid of sophisticated computer programs.

fashion meets function at the Canadian War Museum's camo exhibition

Follow the link to see more about Camouflage, the exhibition – from battlefield to catwalk.

Unfortunately the exhibition has no examples of the PenCott digital multi-environment camouflage, since the pattern was still being trialled when the Imperial War Museum originally presented the show. However, the two British camoufleurs who inspired Hyde Definition’s creative approach to the design of PenCott feature prominently in the Second World War gallery – Professor Hugh Cott, scientist; and artist Sir Roland Penrose. They offered solutions to the problem of concealment from two sources – that of zoological evolution and of visual psychology. At Hyde Definition we combined these points of view, and thus named the pattern in memory of Penrose and Cott: PenCott.

Camouflage is presented by the Canadian War Museum in partnership with the Imperial War Museum, from June 4, 2009 to January 3, 2010.

fangblenny fish found to fox foes

A MASTER of disguise has been uncovered living in Australian waters.

Photo: Dr Karen Cheney

The blue-striped fangblenny is the first fish found to be able to change its colour at will to mimic a variety of other fish.

Its repertoire of colour changes includes olive, orange, and black and electric blue, and it appears to use colour vision to achieve its incognito exploits, new research shows.

University of Queensland biologist, Karen Cheney, said that her examination of the little fish’s eyes showed they should be able to detect different hues. They also have a habit of curling their tail around to touch their head, so they can see their body. “It is possible that fangblennies can view some of their own colouration,” Dr Cheney said.

The only other creature known to be able to imitate other species is the mimic octopus, which alters its colour and shape to resemble lionfish, flatfish and sea snakes.

Dr Cheney and her colleagues had studied the habits of fangblennies on coral reefs in Australia and Indonesia. Their results are published in the journal Proceedings Of The Royal Society.

For food, fangblennies dart out and attack larger reef fish, nipping off tiny pieces of their fins, scales or mucus.

In olive mode they tend to hang out in shoals of similarly coloured damselfish, and in orange mode they mingle with yellow anthias.

“Their repertoire of disguises appears to prevent, or reduce detection by potential victims,” Dr Cheney said. “They may also escape from predators by hiding in a large shoal.”

Their most striking talent is to impersonate black-and-blue juvenile cleaner wrasse – fish that provide a cleaning service for other reef fish by picking parasites off their backs.

The researchers were surprised the fangblennies did not attack reef fish that came to have their parasites removed.

Dr Cheney said this probably helped maintain good relations with cleaner wrasse.

“Otherwise the cleaner fish could get aggressive and chase them away.”

She has found that when the fangblennies are removed from a shoal they can revert to what appears to be their default colour, brown, within a few minutes. Brown ones tended to hide away in holes in the reef, Dr Cheney said.

From an article by Deborah Smith, Science Editor, Sydney Morning Herald

March 3, 2009

cool critter camo

It’s been a while since I put up any pictures of camouflage in nature, so it is fortunate that the Scienceray web magazine has just published an article by Chan Lee Peng on that very subject.

I particularly like this photo of some ibex against a rock strewn mountain side, demonstrating both the effectiveness of their khaki coloured, countershaded bodies at blending, and the magical way that their black-and-white striped legs can break up and disappear against a ‘noisy’ background.

More fantastic pictures of leaf mimics and disruptively patterned creatures here.

how the modernist movement made mariners miss

I love Dark Roasted Blend. I could (and do) spend hours wandering and wondering through their vast archives of the bizarre, banal and sublime.

One particular entry, though has some crossover relevance to this blog – it’s all about the weird and wonderful dazzle camouflage designs painted on merchant and military ships during the World Wars, which provided effective deception against optical range-finding and target tracking, until seaborne radar was adopted.

Read all about it here.

animal camouflage

Buck Denton has some great photos of camouflaged critters over at his Can You See Me blog. I’ve already highlighted the effectiveness of the flounder’s colouration on my own page about the science behind PenCott™, but these pics below show the versatility of the animal’s chameleon-like colour changing ability.

Stone Flounder

Have a look on his site and see if you can spot all 15 sparrows on the ground in one of the photos.

underwater deception – National Geographic

This short video has some great examples of camouflage, mimicry, deception and concealment used by predators and prey in rivers and oceans