News today that scientists are apparently working on a Star Trek style cloaking device. Overlooking the fact that we are banned from doing so after having signed the Treaty of Algeron, this apparently works by manipulating the speed at which light reaches the viewer to create an apparent time-gap in which an event could be hidden. What this will do will in fact amount to making real-life look as if you are trying to stream an HD-video clip on a low-bandwidth connection.
Star Trek technology around the corner?
The maximum size of time-gap this can create is apparently 2*10^-9 seconds – so it is pretty pointless for creating an invisibility device given that the human brain apparently only processes information at the speed of 60Hz (i.e. if you can perform an event within 2*10^-9 seconds, there is no point turning on your cloaking device as no-one will realise you have done it anyway). Realistically though such a cloaking device could have an application hiding events not from humans but from computers which have a processor speed of 476mHz or greater – which is actually most of them nowadays.
In any event, one must bear in mind that the figure of 2*10^-9 may well be improved upon in the future, and given the rate at which, e.g., artificial telepathy has come on in the past twelve months, the likelihood that this will be sooner rather than later cannot be discounted.
Sol Ascendans - The Website of Alex Sumner
Invisibility
News today that scientists are apparently working on a Star Trek style cloaking device. Overlooking the fact that we are banned from doing so after having signed the Treaty of Algeron, this apparently works by manipulating the speed at which light reaches the viewer to create an apparent time-gap in which an event could be hidden. What this will do will in fact amount to making real-life look as if you are trying to stream an HD-video clip on a low-bandwidth connection.
Star Trek technology around the corner?
The maximum size of time-gap this can create is apparently 2*10^-9 seconds – so it is pretty pointless for creating an invisibility device given that the human brain apparently only processes information at the speed of 60Hz (i.e. if you can perform an event within 2*10^-9 seconds, there is no point turning on your cloaking device as no-one will realise you have done it anyway). Realistically though such a cloaking device could have an application hiding events not from humans but from computers which have a processor speed of 476mHz or greater – which is actually most of them nowadays.
In any event, one must bear in mind that the figure of 2*10^-9 may well be improved upon in the future, and given the rate at which, e.g., artificial telepathy has come on in the past twelve months, the likelihood that this will be sooner rather than later cannot be discounted.
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Tagged as Cloaking Device, daily telegraph, Invisibility, star trek