Nope. It redirects it. Useful on a 2D type battlefield. Not useful in fully 3D space. Sorry to inform. If you study black body emissions in physics you'll understand.
Magical Traveller starship heat sinks discovered?
- Thread starter navanod
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Nope. It redirects it. Useful on a 2D type battlefield. Not useful in fully 3D space. Sorry to inform. If you study black body emissions in physics you'll understand.
Oh, so you are privy to the company's product? Know something about it I don't know? According to the released details it works for all directions, so yes, 3D.
How do you know? Are you also on the company's R&D team and know all the details?
Y'all sure seem to be claiming to be subject matter experts on a technology that you have no known connection with the R&D on.
Haven't used it.
Yes, the physics behind it. Which is why you don't understand it.
Nope. It will radiate as per a black body. Do you remember that from physics classes?
Then your argument is invalid since you are arguing a device that you admit you don't know how it works.
No, I'm assuming that the one-paragraph popular science fluff piece that you rely on is accurate. Which is, of course, far from being a sure thing.
Read it again. It talks of bending light and IR around the object. That is, taking an incoming ray and diverting it. It says absolutely nothing about heat generated by the object itself. Since the problem with stealth in space has always been how to get rid of the heat an object generates or absorbs, solving the absorbing part of the problem (assuming for purposes of argument that this technology actually does that) does absolutely nothing to solve the other (and in the case of starships with power plants, much the greater) part of the problem, getting rid of heat generated.
Hans
Then your argument is invalid since you are arguing a device that you admit you don't know how it works.
But unlike you he does seem to know how the physics involved works. Which makes his argument valid and yours invalid.
Hans
actually the company's website specifically discusses blocking thermal detection, i.e. keeping a sensor from detecting the thermal signature of the target.
And unlike him, I'm willing to see a claim of a scientific breakthrough and think, "That's interesting. Let's see if it actually works as described" instead of rejecting it out of hand without first seeing how it works. That's how science and technology advances.
There are plenty of things happening in quantum physics right now that were considered "Impossible/Improbable" 10 years ago but that didn't stop people from researching and finding that what we believed impossible was wrong. Completely closing your mind to new science is the way of the Luddite. Being open minded, but skeptical is what science is all about.
Physics is NOT a static science. New things are being discovered every day.
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And so they radiate heat (probably as IR radiation), easily detectable against the background of space.
That will depend on the reaction time you have. To detect by radar a starship 3 light hours away (assuming your radar has this range), it will take you 6 hours probably, but the time to react is probably days or even weeks (if you have to react at all)
Sure. There's a number of ways to achieve that on a planetary surface and on the scale of a single man. Traveller actually features some ultra-tech versions.
You're willing to accept the claims of a company for their future products as gospel.
Hans
I never said that now did I? What I said was the company made a claim and independent observers have confirmed it. Based on that, I'm willing to give them enough benefit of a doubt to look into it further and not reject it out of hand because it goes against a what is currently "Known."
In a slightly different area of physics:
Personally, I wouldn't have believed it possible a few years ago to create photons out of nothing but that's been shown to be possible also...
Then your argument is invalid since you are arguing a device that you admit you don't know how it works.
Nope. Go study physics before discussing physics.
I'll give the order of magnitude. IF they had invented a way to "hide" heat in a manner that would be useful for the subject of this thread it would be on every TV station right now. Probably every radio station as well. THAT is the magnitude of what you are suggesting...
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Does 5,000 worldwide news stories in the space of 8 days last month count? Of course the news got a lot of it wrong, according to the CEO...
Nope. Not even close. I have 102,000 news stories on the web for minor stuff. (Google has stopped indexing)
Links to articles describing the light-bending metamaterial developed at UC Berkely in 2008. It's possible the Canadians are using a variant of this type of material in their camo.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/08/11_light.shtml
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080812-invisibility-cloak.html
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/08/11_light.shtml
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080812-invisibility-cloak.html
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First story on it I saw was leaked in late 2011. There were some more detailed company statements last summer, when they demoed it for DARPA and the UK equivalent. They have since pulled the details. It does nothing to stop blackbody radiation, but until you heat it up, it will mask until that point. Then again, so will a quilt.
Then again, battlefield IR is looking for stuff in the 300°-500°K range, and only peripherally to about 250°K. (Mostly because the spectrum below ambient is pretty noisy - like watching weak analogue TV in the mountains - you can make out the signal, even see the basic shapes, but you'd be hard pressed to make out the the faces amidst the echoes and static. But they are designed to work in the normal Army operation regime, which runs from about 260°K to about 330°K, and they want to detect at least 150° above to discern active vs cooling engines, etc.)
And, yes, I've gotten to play with civilian "Room temp IR" Cameras recently. They're able to resolve about 10-15°C below ambient. Pretty cleanly, too. Kind of weird...
Another, earlier Nat Geo link:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/10/071023-invisible-wormholes.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/10/071023-invisible-wormholes.html
Interesting sidebar: Your standard digital cameras are capable of this but have been disabled as they can take good res pics through light clothing...
