Time Immortal

The idea of cloaking technology, as seen most famously in Star Trek, has only rarely been portrayed realistically in science fiction. In fact, the only such portrayal that I’ve encountered personally was in Timothy Zahn’s excellent trilogy of Star Wars novels. The cloaking technology therein was of the “classical” variety, by which I mean a cloak generated by the object which was to be rendered invisible.

(Note: all of this, of course, ignores the fact that stealth in space is fundamentally impossible anyhow, thanks to a pesky little concept called thermodynamics.)

The problem with the “classical” cloak, apart from the above note, is that while it would effectively prevent the ship from being seen by others, it would also blind the cloaked ship in a similar way. The cloak works, in essence, by bending the visible light spectrum (and possibly other parts of the spectrum) around the cloaked ship…which means that while the cloaked ship is thus not reflecting light into the eyes of those who might wish to observe it (thus rendering it functionally invisible), it is also preventing light from reaching the eyes of its crew; this is the classic “they can’t see me if I can’t see them” scenario.

Which is how Zahn portrayed cloaking in his Star Wars novels, and which is how Star Trek has never portrayed a cloak. In Star Trek, cloaked ships retain the ability to “see” — they are not blinded by that which renders them invisible.

Well, as it turns out, that kind of cloaking is possible too, at least in theory. There’s just one problem: the cloaking material or means must be external to the cloaked object.

All invisibility cloaks to date work by hiding an object embedded inside them. Now a group of physicists have worked out how to remotely cloak objects that sit outside a cloaking material. The trick is to make the cloaking material with optical properties that are exactly complementary to the space outside them. Complementary means that the material reverses the effect the space has on a plane wave of light passing through it. To an observer this space would appear to vanish. The scientists say that to cloak an object sitting outside the cloaking material, first measure its optical properties and then embed a “complementary image” of the object within the cloak. So a plane wave is first distorted by the object but then restored to a plane by the complementary image of the object within the cloak (abstract). An observer sees nothing. This method has another benefit. Objects hidden in conventional cloaks are blinded because no light enters the cloaked region. But objects that are remotely cloaked like this should still be able to see their surroundings.

Not that anyone has built one yet, of course; the whole idea of creating a material with “complementary” optical properties to a particular environment (stellar or terrestrial) is itself a rather large discussion. And unless I miss my bet, the drawback to this cloaking method would be that it only works within a narrow viewing angle, unless the material and embedded image could somehow be made to encircle (without blinding) the cloaked object.

Of course, a cloak only really needs to work in one direction: that of the enemy. But of course, all bets are off when the heat-seeking missiles take flight.

6:30 PM — some dude was getting interviewed on the CBC, telling the reporter about how the “last 8 years” have been the longest of his life. He was getting all weepy about the idea that some change might finally be in sight.

Somebody needs a life. Check that: somebody needs more to his life than who is in office.

6:45 PM — Grace has, of course, been taking care of Ella all day, and so made a point of taking a survey of all the various news channels: she’s all but disgusted at the pro-Obama slant in the coverage.

7:00 PM — Turning the channel away from election coverage; we’re getting too infuriated at the bias.

7:15 PM — And it’s my turn to hold the baby, while Momma finishes her dinner.

7:30 PM — Ohio for Obama? That’s what the CBC just said. I call shennanigans, personally. Other results have flipped toward McCain as we’ve been watching…so we’ll see.

7:45 PM — Peter Mansbridge is certainly no stranger to fawning over Obama, praising his rhetorical abilities. To which I say: it’s not the man, it’s the Teleprompter.

Still, I see that Ace’s and Hillbuzz’s predictions were essentially correct: the media is going all out to call states for Obama at the first possibility. The CBC is showing McCain at 90 and Obama at 200, but there’s no way those numbers are anywhere in the vicinity of finalized as yet.

We’re gonna turn off the TV for a bit; there’s too much American…sensory overload…on the television at the moment, and all of it for Obama. I’m gonna go grab some dinner myself, I think.

7:54 PM — Beef stew is good.

8:57 PM — We’ve switched to Star Trek.

9:16 PM — Well, it seems that the hype and change won the day. Barack Hussein Obama has gone on to defeat John McCain in the election. Star Trek had a better ending, I have to say.

It will be an interesting four years, and I mean that in the most Chinese sense possible.

So, what can Americans look forward to? I mean, besides partial-birth abortion becoming legal again, higher taxes, “redistribution of wealth” socialism, and assorted other treats? William Ayers as Secretary of State?

8:47 AM — well, it’s all historic and such, first black (half-black, whatever) President and all. I’m not sure the Obama presidency will be marked by much else than that particular distinction, and I wonder if perhaps this election result won’t steer the approval ratings for the presidential office in the same direction that the Democrat majority in the House has taken that legislative body’s approval rating.

Apropos of Kathy’s rant on the subject, I think it’s worth observing that in this election, that old maxim was once again proven true: if a conservative candidate starts trending left, he loses. McCain talked a fairly liberal game on a lot of issues, and his attempt to appeal to the immigrant vote — especially with concessions on illegal immigration — cost him in the end: Latinos voted for Obama. And so did the more progressive swing voters.

The shape of things to come will be…yes, interesting (in the Chinese sense) is by far the best term for it. Abortion rights will be vastly expanded, infants born alive after a botched abortion will be stripped of their legal protection, taxes will rise, and state-mandated “wealth redistribution” may well become the norm for American taxpayers and businesspeople.

Still, one interesting positive has emerged from all of this: Canada is now the conservative country on this continent. How’s that for odd?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

This image just has so many uses!

see more celeb pics

Grace adds: My heart melted a little when I saw this picture. What a great caption!

This one goes in a bit of a different direction:

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Taken from here, a gallery of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans dressed up in various related costumes…and then photographed artistically.

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Something about how it would take a lot of energy to pull off. As in “converting the entire mass of Jupiter to pure energy” (according to E=mc²).

Still, it’s nice to know that this particular piece of Star Trek technology is theoretically possible, I guess.

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Don’t get me wrong — I’m a Star Trek fan, especially since I married a hard-core Trekkie. I really loved Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, although that was admittedly because that show (more than any other Trek series) really tried to make the Federation into something more realistic, as opposed to this utopian paradise with seemingly no internal corruption or difficulties. DS9 added real grit to Gene Roddenberry’s perfect world, and tore at its seams a bit. And for that (and other reasons) it was, in this blogger’s opinion, the best damn Trek show ever made.

(For similar reasons, I rather enjoyed Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.)

At any rate, Mark Shea has an excellent two-part takedown of the “Prime Directive” — the first law, if you will, of the Federation of Trek fame. It’s a bit of a pointless thing, criticizing a belief held by characters of a television show. But at the same time, the same thinking that underpins the Prime Directive underpins a lot of the post-modern assumptions of our society, and the effects of that will be every bit as dangerous as the Prime Directive proved to be in those shows and Trek novels where it was at issue.

Update: Welcome, Five Feet of Fury readers! Nothing like a link from the Shaidle to blast a blog post’s view count through the roof! And since Kathy is right to point out the lack of money in the Trek universe, let me add one more thing about DS9 that I liked — gold-pressed latinum.