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  • SciTech

    Invisibility Cloak Swirls Closer to Reality

    By Posted on 8.14.2008 4 Comments

    Ever wished you could have Harry Potter's invisibility cloak? Science, not magic, could make that a reality. Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have created materials that have the potential to bend light and even redirect it around themselves, cloaking any object behind them. They are metamaterials, materials that gain unusual properties via their structures. While all materials found in nature have a positive refractive index, these man-made metamaterials have a negative one.

    8.15.2008 at 09:05pm - Comment by mzparra

    Where can we find more information on how this technology works? I'm very interested.. MZ

  • SciTech

    The Indestructible Bridge

    By Posted on 8.28.2008 3 Comments

    Hillman Composite Beams $500,000 Time: 12 years
    Prototype | | | | | Product Last November, John Hillman stood beneath a bridge built with prototype plastic-and-concrete beams of his own design. Then he signaled for his team to release a nine-million-pound coal train. “You can do all the calculations you want; you can do tons of lab testing. But at the end of the day, you run a heavy-axle coal train over the bridge, and that pretty much tells you whether or not it’s gonna hold,” Hillman says. It didn’t budge.

    Article Rating:
    4
    5.19.2008 at 10:20pm - Comment by mzparra

    I find this invention to be a great key for mass transportation. Now that the gasoline crisis is upon us we will have to seriously think on using alternative ways to move about instead of driving our vehicles. A way to do it would be to start building Monorail Systems that would take us to our destinations on above grade level beams. Such as the ones mentioned in this article. Mario P.

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