Tsunami Invisibility Cloak 172
BuzzSkyline writes "New Scientist is reporting on a lab-scale experiment that may lead to a tsunami invisibility cloak, which could protect islands, open-ocean platforms and even coastlines from dangerous waves by effectively making them invisible to tsunamis. The technology is based on the same sorts of negative index of refraction ideas that some physicists are exploring as they try to make an optical invisibility cloak, except that it works with water instead of light."
Dharma Initiative anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
Notice when the Island moved at the end of last year? What date was it? What happened around that time? Tsunami.
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Yes, I did notice!
I made it a point to date the proverbial 'Preacher's Daughters' and usually scored bigtime!
Hell, I even managed(by coincidence) to time it just right and snagged one of them when both of us were finally ready to settle down into a stable marriage.
Happily married now for 13 years, and going strong.
Nothing to see (Score:5, Funny)
Move along - Nothing to see here.
Re:Nothing to see (Score:4, Funny)
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invisibility will help? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:invisibility will help? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know the wording is awkward. But, keep in mind, light is understood to be a wave as well. Thus, the mechanic of causing a tsunami to go seamlessly around an island should be nearly the same as causing a light beam to go around the object. This wouldn't block the Tsunami wave, the wave would continue as normal, as if nothing had happened. The Island also would not be touched by the wave either. The metaphor seems to work.
Re:But what about the other islands (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:But what about the other islands (Score:5, Informative)
Having said that, I'm not entirely clear how you can use the device described to protect coastlines. It looks like you need a 360 degree coverage for the device to work. That's not going to work for something like say...China's coast.
Re:But what about the other islands (Score:5, Funny)
Having said that, I'm not entirely clear how you can use the device described to protect coastlines. It looks like you need a 360 degree coverage for the device to work. That's not going to work for something like say...China's coast.
I think it could be made to work... but it would suck to be in Iceland.
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Just give Iceland a cloak, too...
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oh for fucks sake.
the islands were not built by anyone.
There is no design.
And this "dumping the problem onto the next guy" thing is about as retarded as claiming that building earthquake proof buildings will lead just make the earthquake worse for everyone else.
Re:But what about the other islands (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really, their point is pretty good. If a Tsunami would have broken up on your island, the "invisibility" rings will instead pass it on to the guy behind you.
Of course, a better analogy of why that has to be acceptable is that, you can't be held liable if you duck and the guy behind you gets shot. It's not your fault that he was unwilling or unable to duck too.
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So I have a duty to take the fall for the people behind me?
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Again with the "put".
No gods or demons decided to put anything anywhere.
Just because you've always gained from someone elses suffering doesn't give you the right to stop them from protecting themselves rather than you.
Don't force other people to suffer because you're stuck up and think that you're the center of the universe.
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I'm advocating for the poor souls who've been suffering for years and who you now say shouldn't try to stop their suffering. Why should the people on the first island be expected to suffer for the sake of others when there's a way for them to protect themselves?
Re:But what about the other islands (Score:5, Insightful)
I was thinking this, too. However, if you read the article, it's intended for man-made structures and, if you look at the model (and read the article), it doesn't seem like it'd be feasible for anything on a larger scale, anyway. You'd end up destroying most of your own coastline and aquatic habitat in the process, and seriously screwing up the local ocean pretty much permanently.
Re:But what about the other islands (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But what about the other islands (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah screw the lousy standards around here.
I'm going back to the rest of the internet where they have whole pithy paragraphs and entire knee-jerk domains.
Re:But what about the other islands (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think tsunamis are a big problem for offshore drilling platforms in the first place. From what I've read, they use the ballast tanks in daily operation, and they can also be used to rise above the waves. That seems a bit more practical than surrounding it with an enormous structure to provide protection against something that probably won't occur in the lifetime of the rig in the first place. AFAICT, this solves a problem that basically doesn't exist.
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I don't think tsunamis are a big problem for offshore drilling platforms in the first place. From what I've read, they use the ballast tanks in daily operation, and they can also be used to rise above the waves.
From what I know about tsunamis they are barely noticable until they reach shallow water, so offshore drilling platforms don't need this. I believe the point is for small low islands where the tsunami would otherwise wash right over most of the habitable area.
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Right.. I had written essentially your same post, but it was just conjecture. Suffice to say that the only references I could find to "oil rig" and "tsunami" were this article (or others like it) and another by a company that makes the ballast pumps. They talk about an 80' wave, so I'm assuming it's a rogue wave.... which doesn't make much sense either, because from what I know of them, they're caused by constructive interference, which would only happen along the intersection of two crests. It's not som
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Not a Republican, then?
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But is a tsunami a "wave" (in this sense)?
If the water level rises by 10 meters it really, really does not matter whether the "waves" are passing the island in question or not.
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Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses were obviously in short supply or beyond or technology
Re:invisibility will help? (Score:5, Funny)
Well they tried giant towels, figuring that the Tsunami would think that since the Island couldn't see it, then it must not be able to see the Island, but that didn't work because Tsunami's are far to clever for that. Which isn't too surprising since Tsunami's are proven pack hunters, always attacking in waves.
Re:invisibility will help? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:invisibility will help? (Score:4, Funny)
Is it anything like the eye of the tiger?
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This new wave of nonsensical puns has gone too far already, eye think.
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Of course towels didn't work. They're not used for cloaking, they're used for inter-galactic hitchhiking.
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Nice model, but totally impractical. Tsunami waves are extremely long, like hundreds of meters. You will need to surround your island with these pillars for the same order of distance, or these pillars will be invisible to tsunami, and not in the way authors intended.
So we are tacking what, thousands of pillars surrounding the island? Really dumb idea.
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Well, hurricanes do.
http://xkcd.com/453/ [xkcd.com] :P
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And invisibility will help you against a giant wave? I wasn't aware that Tsunamis basically hunted those vulnerable islands and coastlines down for large scale destruction.
Yup, now you know - life is like a Road Runner cartoon.
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Because those third-world islands can afford it. (Score:2, Insightful)
But Guenneau cautions that large structures like islands and coastlines are unlikely to become invisible anytime soon, because building the many small islands needed to protect one is such a big job.
"It's crazy - maybe only people in Dubai could do this," he adds, referring to the spectacular artificial islands built there.
Smaller structures such as offshore oil platforms would be easier to protect, he says.
I personally like the little model. It must've taken awhile to CNC machine that.
How are the tourist ships and supply ships supposed to get to the island at the center?
Re:Because those third-world islands can afford it (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe something like a drawbridge, except that the "fingers" could go sideways, slide down, or lay down?
Or maybe some of the channels could be made big enough with an acceptable loss of efficacy?
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> could go sideways, slide down, or lay down
A Wonkabridge!
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Re:Because those third-world islands can afford it (Score:4, Funny)
With a hammer?
-Taylor
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They anchor out front, where they are vulnerable to the tsunami of course.
If you were going to go through all this effort, wouldn't it just be easier to use all that building material to just put all the buildings on stilts?
Summary's FOS Again (Score:5, Informative)
From the article:
No, we are not going to be protecting islands with this thing anytime soon. And we're not protecting tsunamis from anything because the tsunami will just wash over this suckers unless we build them really, really tall. In which case, we're better off building a freaking wall.
Re:Summary's FOS Again (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Summary's FOS Again (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also going to be impractical for structures that aren't close to shore. You have to build artificial islands all around the structure. It will cost a lot to build artificial islands in deep water. Therefore, it's impractical in shallow water, and impractical in deep water. Nobody's going to build one, it's just an interesting application of wave physics, transferring the idea of being invisible to light waves to being invisible to ocean waves.
Okay... but... (Score:4, Interesting)
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They follow the radial corridors.
Since ships aren't waves, they presumably have little trouble following them.
Re:Okay... but... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, they do have a wave function, but the wavelengths are really small....
E=hv.
Re:Okay... but... (Score:5, Funny)
First, you draw this tsunami-wave canceling device on a placemat, labeling the ocean as "START" and the coastline as "FINISH". Print out thousands of them and hand out the placemats to family restaurants, along with a few boxes of crayons.
Then, you just go around collecting the "used" placemats, kindly filled out by unsuspecting 5 year-olds, and deliver them to cargo-ship captains.
Problem solved.
Feasibility (Score:5, Informative)
Quoth TFA:
It's a nice idea but a barrier like this would have to be made of strong stuff. That Asian tsunami a few years ago was able to pick up ten-feet-tall concrete blocks and throw them around like Lego bricks. I'm not sure if I'd want to be sitting downstream of something like this unless they're thinking of making them out of low-lying artificial islands, and in that case I don't know how effective they'd be under a tall enough wave. I'd like to have seen a bit more in the way of diagrams and specifics in TFA.
Re:Feasibility (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm guessing here... but here's my take on it...
It's not a barrier and does not "block" the waves.
It simply disrupts them, like pebbles on the bed of a river. The wave goes around the islands, pretty harmlessly, but the interference pattern created, essentially protects the object at the center.
It's a very subtle approach, not the brute force on you seem to think.
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TFA specifically says that they'd have to use a series of artificial islands, mentioned specifically in the section of article you quoted. The height of the wave, as mentioned elsewhere, isn't the issue so much as the energy carried in the wave.
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It was the picture of the smaller device used in their modeling that led me to think in terms of barriers and walls and stuff. I'm just thinking that if a wave were tall enough, then artificially shallow water is going to make the wave even higher if there's enough energy behind it, so the artificial islands would probably need to be quite some distance away to be able to take the energy out of a tsunami. I wonder what kind of ecological impact it would have too, disrupting habitats and all that.
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Primary Use? (Score:2)
Civilization V: Just try your Tech Level 2 Tsunami against my Tech Level 3 Wave Cloaking Device, you rank amateur!
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Ha, idiot. I just fortified my phalanx. You don't stand a chance.
Jeez (Score:5, Funny)
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Waterhenge! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Waterhenge! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Waterhenge! (Score:5, Funny)
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hey America, ive got these rocks that stop tsunamis, anybody want to buy some?
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But how good are they at repelling tigers?
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Do you see any tigers around here?
Oh wait, there's one in my PowerBook.
Never mind, then.
Stringhenge!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Actually I think the best tsunami-fighting device is a giant ball of string; this is pretty clearly proven by the town of Cawker City, Kansas, home to the largest ball of twine in the world, has never been hit by a tsunami. So that proves that the string stops tsunamis; my logic here is impeccable. As for Britain, a lot of people think that country's resistance to tsunamis is due to Stonehenge, but the reality is a much simpler explanation -- the ubiquity of umbrellas. Remember Occam's razor, folks!
they have been watching too much (Score:2)
LOST
seems very pointless... (Score:4, Insightful)
rebuilding is much cheaper then numerous artificial islands.
most people will detect, warn, evacuate and rebuild - this kind of (very very) expensive prevention simply does not make sense on a 1 in 100 year (if not much more) disaster prevention.
it is like putting in bullet proof glass in all the windows of your house just in case the couple next door decide to have a son who might want to buy a bb gun later on in life...
Re:seems very pointless... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:seems very pointless... (Score:5, Insightful)
early warning system is much cheap then numerous artificial islands.
Definitely.
rebuilding is much cheaper then numerous artificial islands.
most people will detect, warn, evacuate and rebuild - this kind of (very very) expensive prevention simply does not make sense on a 1 in 100 year (if not much more) disaster prevention.
Er, well, that's not so clear. I mean that was roughly the logic behind not building up the levies in New Orleans, and the cost of that project was several times less than the resulting damages from Katrina. A project which they are now engaging in so as to prevent a subsequent disaster and make people feel safe returning to/investing in the city, meaning they payed for the protection but had to also pay much, much more due to not having it when they needed it.
Now I'm not saying this particular system is cost effective for any particular city. I think it would mostly depend on what kind of materials and engineering you need to make effective barriers. These aren't artificial islands like the ones in Dubai the article mentions. They're big walls. If a tall column of reinforced concrete sunk into the ocean floor, like the struts of a large suspension bridge, is sufficient then I don't think it would be that ridiculous. And think of it this way -- just because "the big one" only comes once every hundred years, there's still plenty of "pretty big ones" that cause lots of damage every single year.
it is like putting in bullet proof glass in all the windows of your house just in case the couple next door decide to have a son who might want to buy a bb gun later on in life...
If I may engage in some analogy abuse, it's more like the couple next door has a son who pretty consistently fires off a few rounds in random directions every night, sometimes using larger calibers than others. How long are you going to bet that he hits someone else's house and not yours? It probably sounds like a safe gamble up to the point the .45 flies through your living room.
Hurricanes, typhoons, and tsunamis happen regularly. They hit sections of the coast every year, causing damage every time. They aren't hypothetical. Even the big ones aren't. They're more like matters of probability, and thus time.
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Wouldn't it be simpler to have an horizontal turbine instead of a vertical one?
well... (Score:4, Interesting)
As a general rule, when science fights nature, nature wins.
We are, after all talking about dealing with forces that have shaped the planet upon which we evolved. Star trek fiction aside, I don't think we have enough energy available to seriously hinder a tsunami.
Early warning systems so people can get the hell out of the way would be better then a 'stand back, I'm going to try science' approach.
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Note that the Netherlands is not under water, and all those man-made lakes behind dams have not all drained. And when it comes to warming up the planet by adding CO2 to the atmosphere, Science has done a great job against nature. When science fights nature, science generally wins, but nature does always get a few really good hits in first.
The idea from TFA is not to use additional energy to hinder the tsunami, but to merely redirect the tsunami's energy. It's like the Judo of climate control. If I understand the article correctly, the posts do not have to be strong enough to stop the tsunami. That's the entire point of it.
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when it comes to warming up the planet by adding CO2 to the atmosphere, Science has done a great job against nature. When science fights nature, science generally wins
I disagree. The endgame of unchecked global climate change will be a planet which cannot support our species. So we go extinct, and the planet recovers without us.
Thus nature wins.
Just Close Your Eyes (Score:5, Funny)
If you can't see the tsunami, the tsunami can't see you.
Re:Just Close Your Eyes (Score:4, Funny)
Aw crap.
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If you can't see the tsunami, the tsunami can't see you.
Modern tsunami's use GPS. That's why they're more devastating than the old ones which could only strike during daylight.
Energy source? (Score:3, Interesting)
A possible nice side effect of this could be that instead of letting the tsunami pass, it would decrease the energy of it, so that it won't be as destructive for those in the wake.
Or it could just make the wave pass through even more powerful *shrug* Seems like something to look into though.
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It wouldn't be perpetual energy, but it would be free energy, very similar to tidal power [wikipedia.org] Unless I'm missing something obvious, this wouldn't be perpetual motion...
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Wrong. It would be possible to harness the energy. And nowhere is there any implication of it being an unlimited source of free energy. It may not end up being worthwhile, but presumably any time there is a storm surge the resultant whirlpool would exist.
I have to ask (Score:2)
Wake me up!
Oblig- Homer Simpson quote (Score:3, Funny)
There is something you must learn
Something something then you'll see
You'll avoid catastrophe
D'oh!
What for? (Score:4, Informative)
Tsunamis are harmless in open water - their height is on the order of a meter, and there's very little horizontal movement of water involved. They only get tall when they steepen as surf, and are dangerous because of their enormous wavelength (up to kilometers) which means one wave has an enormous volume of water to spill.
All of this won't affect drilling platforms at all, and for islands you need to build a structure all around it - a wall is a lot cheaper. In any case, the low incidence of tsunamis won't encourage anybody to build such structures.
JFWI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami#Characteristics [wikipedia.org]
Ocean pollution (Score:4, Funny)
Article summary (Score:2)
Custom Designed Reefs (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead of spending a lot of energy and wasteful construction techniques building many pillars surrounding islands, maybe we could cultivate coral reefs around them in the right shape. It could take years, but tsunamis don't hit any one island or platform very often.
That is, if this "refractive shield" is any more protective than just the same amount of "armor" in a simple wall around the defended location. Is it?
A preposterous solution (Score:4, Funny)
The whole idea is just silly. Everyone knows the only way you can save your island from the spiteful anger of the sky gods is through fasting and prayer.
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The article says the wave would pass undisturbed through the island, so the result is that for the people behind teh island it would be as if it wasn't there at all.
Re:Yeah but those islands act as barriers... (Score:5, Insightful)
As is always the case, those with the money get to decide.
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The brakes on the Semi-Truck behind you go out... 'Quick! The invisibility cloak will save us!'
I thought we were supposed to consider that lorry to be a uniform sphere? Now you're saying we should treat it as a wave, too? I didn't realize light shared wave-particle duality with semi trucks.
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I didn't realize light shared wave-particle duality with semi trucks.
It does have a wavelength, albeit a ridiculously small one. One of the wonderful things about physics is that it is equally true for large things as small things. A particle's de Broglie wavelength [wikipedia.org] is given as h/p, where h is Planck's constant and p is the momentum of the particle (or any object, really).
And yes, I am conveniently ignoring incompatibilities between QM and GR. I'm assuming that the same laws govern planets as electrons and that we just haven't figured out compatible mathematical modelin
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If you think QM and GR are anything close to similar, you either don't know enough QM, or you don't know enough GR.
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I was merely suggesting that the
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The brakes on the Semi-Truck behind you go out... 'Quick! The invisibility cloak will save us!'
I thought we were supposed to consider that lorry to be a uniform sphere? Now you're saying we should treat it as a wave, too? I didn't realize light shared wave-particle duality with semi trucks.
No no no no! It's a series of tubes!
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The wave-particle duality of vehicles is well established. Here's an example. [flickr.com]
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heh, that's pretty funny in that context
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Yes.
From what I understood, the forward movement of the wave is converted into an circular one, which is -as the wave leaves- reconverted into a forward movement again. With the exception of dissipated energy due to friction, the wave behind the construction should be more or less the same.
Hence also the similarity with the invisibility cloak, where the light that leaves the cloak is supposedly the same as the light entering. I'm not an expert on the latter -neither on ocean hydraulics for that matter-
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I sure hope no one respawns inside a wall like they did in the 40s.
http://www.think-aboutit.com/Misc/philadelphia_experiment.htm [think-aboutit.com]
Ok, so reading this extremely fanciful story, I have one slight question in regards to the project.
I am not going to go into the conspiracy theory junk, nor am I going to say out and out that it is all a load of crap, but here is the question:
If they had a link from 1943 to 1983, why did they need Nazi gold to fund the project? Surely having all sporting results, lotteries, etc for 40 years, PLUS all of the patents for that period of time (because lets face it, you can get in first) would give unlimited fun