SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Cloaking devices -- it's not just 'Star Trek' anymore
During the 175th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, being held May 7-11, 2018, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, [Amanda D.] Hanford will describe the physics behind an underwater acoustic shield designed in her lab.
Hanford and her team set out to engineer a metamaterial that can allow the sound waves to bend around the object as if it were not there. Metamaterials commonly exhibit extraordinary properties not found in nature, like negative density. To work, the unit cell -- the smallest component of the metamaterial -- must be smaller than the acoustic wavelength in the study.
[...] To date, most acoustic metamaterials have been designed to deflect sound waves in air. Hanford decided to take this work one step further and accept the scientific challenge of trying the same feat underwater. Acoustic cloaking underwater is more complicated because water is denser and less compressible than air. These factors limit engineering options.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday May 11 2018, @04:55PM (2 children)
I doubt that. If long range detection can't keep up, there are other counter-measures they could pursue. A hemisphere of submersible drones doesn't seem unreasonable. Aircraft carriers are too important for global dominance -- consider the godawful amounts of money we already throw at them, and ask yourself if the cost of a pile of drones would deter us from building more. I suspect that they will eventually become seasteads of a sort, much like the European towns whose central layouts look suspiciously like Roman military forts. With nuclear reactors on board, all they'll really need is local food production.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday May 11 2018, @07:18PM (1 child)
At sea, the bigger the boat the faster it can go and speed is important. So, no, underwater drones will not do.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday May 11 2018, @07:25PM
Slow carriers are better than no carriers, but they'll probably come up with something much more clever than my spitball solution.