When Aliens Attack

According to that bastion for accurate reporting, Fox News, top NASA scientists have predicted an imminent alien attack on mankind. These aliens, who inhabit the planet Algoria, have decided that humans have done enough damage to our own planet via Anthropic Global Warming (AGW) and should be stopped before we melt all the comets in the Oort Cloud or something [sub - please check].



The only way to prevent such an onslaught is for engineers to construct a Humungous Orbital Geostationary Wide Autonomous Shield for Humanity (HOGWASH) to make the Earth appear invisible to outside observers, say these boffins. They estimate that if Congress approves an immediate grant for one billion dollars, that should be enough to fund a proposal to investigate a feasibility study into whether such a shield could be built in time to fend off the attack which could happen ANY DAY NOW!!!

When pressed for details, team leader Professor Huge Grant licked his finger, stuck in the air and announced that it would cost on the order of one trillion dollars per year to keep the shield operational, but on the plus side it would appear completely transparent from Earth. It would also need a constant supply of hookers and blow, for reasons which the team are still working out the details. Oh, yes it will.

Harry Potter was unavailable for comment.

Whale Meat Again*

So. It looks like there was a wee contretemps in the Southern Ocean today. See how you do in my impromptu quiz.

1. The Japanese warship hit the Adi Gil because:
a) The powerboat was using advanced stealth technology, making it invisible.
b) The Japanese crew were busy looking for whales.
c) The powerboat accelerated directly into the path of the warship.

2. At the time of the collision, the Adi Gil was:
a) Completely stationery, honest.
b) Sailing directly away from the whaling fleet.
c) Steering towards the bow of the Japanese ship. As you do.

3. The conservation group's boat was:
a) Utterly destroyed, killing all aboard her.
b) Sunk without trace, drowning all the crew.
c) Holed, but otherwise still floating.

4. The Japanese are carrying out "scientific" whaling. They are trying to find:
a) Whether the whale population is at a sustainable size for commercial whaling to resume.
b) Any way around IWC rules on catching whales.
c) The tastiest recipe for whalemeat, yum!

* I had a better title, but forgot it. Sorry.

Science Alert

Scienticians in California have announced that they have developed a working invisibility cloak, just in time for the latest Star Trek movie. Previous attempts used metals which absorb some of the light and so reveal the location of the cloaked object, but the current meta-materials are totally state-of-the-art.

"The cloak's design cancels out the distortion produced by the bulge of the object underneath, bending light around it - like water around a rock - and giving the illusion of a flattened surface," says the blurb on the BBC website.

See if you can guess what the hidden object is, then click on the image to see if you were right.

Invisibility News

Yes, Tefal-heads have come a step closer to producing a fully working invisibility cloak just like in Harry Potter. Well, sort of. Depending on which article you read, the boffins have either stumbled upon the new meta-material or spent years of their lives turning theory into practice. Stumbled. You know, like Oppenheimer stumbled upon the atom bomb.

The structure, described in Nature, works in the infrared spectrum, but the same principle should work with visible light..."It’s just a question of fabrication." Just the one teensy problem there. This isn't a "switch it on, switch it off" cloaking device, it's a passive meta-material. Light falls on it and presto! It bends the light away. My guess is they've already built dozens of working prototypes, but can't find any of them.

Anyways, it's great, because this new technique can hide tanks, aircraft and even warships. It must be true, it was on the internet!

Here's an earlier attempt at invisibility. Still needs some work, methinks.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Click on image to find out.



I'm practising with PaintShopPro. Think I might buy it.

Nothing To See Here

I decided on the title to this post at lunchtime today, as I was planning to stick some photos over there on Flicker ===>

And also mention an update to Celebrity Litigation here.

But then I saw this article in New Scientist. After least year's less than sensational news about a shed of invisibility, boffins have only gone and created an actual, working invisibility cloak using gold rings. Blimey! Where did they get that idea?

One tiny catch. You have to be about 500 nanometres in size for it to work. So even Frodo would be a smidgen on the chubby side...

In fact I can't imagine any human being who'd be thin enough to pull it off. Can you?