GCIS TECHNOLOGY BRIEFING: Naturally forming crystals the future of invisibility tech?

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: POPSCI

01February2011 9:58pmEST

GCIS TECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Metamaterials have long been thought the key to creating the working, visible spectrum “invisibility cloak” promised us by sci-fi, but it might be time for metamaterials to move over. Two independent labs—one at the University of Birmingham in the UK, the other at MIT—have used naturally forming calcite crystals to render visible objects (as in large enough to see with the naked eye) invisible, something metamaterials haven’t come close to doing.

Metamaterials have achieved a measure of invisibility, but not in any practical sense; they can bend certain wavelengths of light to conceal an object at the microscopic level, but so far they have not been able to work well at the macro scale or in the visible spectrum. It turns out researchers may not have needed such an exotic medium.

Calcite, an abundant crystalline form of calcium carbonate that forms naturally (it’s the primary stuff of sea shells), has long been known to have peculiar light-bending properties, and if the Birmingham and MIT findings are any indication it might have a future in cloaking devices. (read full report)

GCIS INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING: MIT develops High-speed real-time 3D holographic device

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: Science News

28January2011 2:42pmEST

GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: The Force is strong with holographic scientists these days. Researchers from MIT unveiled the fastest 3-D holographic video to date at a conference in San Francisco January 23, filming a graduate student dressed as Princess Leia and projecting her as a postcard-sized hologram in real time.

The holographic device plays a 3-inch projection at 15 frames per second, just shy of movie refresh rates of 24 to 30 frames per second, the MIT researchers demonstrated at the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers’ conference on practical holography.

The red hologram is jerkier and has much lower resolution than the one in Star Wars that sparked the public fascination with 3-D holograms in the 1970s. In fact, it kind of looks like a red blob on a staticky TV. But it’s 30 times faster than a telepresence device created in 2010 by University of Arizona researchers (SN Online: 12/4/10). (read full report)