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Quantum fluctuations in space, science, exploration and other cosmic fields... served up regularly by MSNBC.com science editor Alan Boyle since 2002.

Alan Boyle covers the physical sciences, anthropology, technological innovation and space science and exploration for MSNBC.com. He is a winner of the AAAS Science Journalism Award, the NASW Science-in-Society Award and other honors; a contributor to "A Field Guide for Science Writers"; and a member of the board of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

Check out Boyle's biography or send a message to Cosmic Log via cosmiclog@msnbc.com.



Weekend field trips on the Web

Posted: Friday, July 28, 2006 4:41 PM by Alan Boyle

X Prize Cup unveils its 2006 Web site 
'Nova' on PBS: 'This Old Pyramid'
The Economist: The not-so-shocking electric car
Bigelow Aerospace: The latest photos from Genesis 1 in orbit 
NASA: Crash landing on the moon
The New Yorker: Know it all 

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I am not surpised at the electric car article. The low opinion of electric cars can easily be changed instantly by doing exactly what they are. So, what is described will factually work and it does smash to bits the old stima about electric cars.

However, the self-generating motor that I have described is so far down the road beyond their wildest dream that it is ridiculously so. The one I have described factually has absolutely NO plug in time to charge batteries, has absolutely NO bad affect on the environment, doesn't cost anywhere near that amount, and can obviously have all the power and more of what they are describing. The power is simply that theirs is all store energy in batteries, and the EM motor is operating continually in creating the power at maximum output all the time. Their batteries obviously run down and the power output lessens the further it goes. Theirs is also limited to the total amount the batteries can hold, and the other has no limit at all except how large of a motor that can be contained in the vehicle. The spinning speed of the EM motor can be enormous, and that is where the huge amount of power output advantage exists. It can even spin in the light speed area.

So, their thing is good, but it's not even in the same universe with ultra-great.
Concerning the article "Scientist thinks invisibility possible in future", the true situation is that invisibility can be accomplished right now with off-the-shelf parts even if the situation isn't within the ability of the "experts" to figure this out.

To accomplish this you can see the science by the following:

Think of a person who wants to be invisible, and they step inside the invisibility box. It's just a box with a door in one end so the person can get inside. For ease think of the opening being in the bottom.

The box then has two sides in this description, which has a front where you want observers to not see you, and a back which is the direction toward what you want them to see instead of you. (The sides can be done the same, but to keep this simple this describes only the one view direction.)

To accomplish the invisibility, it is needed to transger every "pixel" of the image behind the box around the box and to then emit each of those "pixels" in perfect placement and alignment so the pixel output on the front side shows the back view. This i9s something like the pixel images being transferred right through the person or even with the person and box removed, which is extremely easy, huh?

With that, the off-the-shelf way to do this is to use fiber optic fibers in perfect placement on both sides and to bend the fibers around the outside of the box. This causes the "screen of pixels" absorbed on the back side to be seen as a "screen of identical pixels" on the front side. In reality it is only causing the light waves to travel around the person and then to continue on the viewed side.

That is a point-for-point transfer of the image. It is extremely difficult to do this with any kind of transmitted projection because projections always come from a point which then spreads out in a cone pattern and is then not seen as real at all distances. So, real invisibility has to transfer all points to the same spread of projected points. Optical fibers and similar things can do this if they are precisely used as needed.

I am giving this one because it is trivial as far as terrific science. Beside that it's Monday and I needed to do something beside just read stuff.
Concerning the invisibility article, and the following url about how they are working to accomplish it, the following describes why the method in the picture won't work.

That method would make the object in the center not seen but the bulging of the light around the center ball would interfere with other parallel light that is also passing next to the object light. This would cause a huge interference that would cause anyone seeing the warping to know that something odd was there. So, it covers up the particular object but doesn't conceal its presence.

The viewed image would likely be an odd, warped bubble that twists the background image at best.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12961080/


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