Monday, January 19, 2009

Life on Mars?


by M A N

Well, is there ? I'm going to venture a highly uneducated guess and say no, but it's fun to speculate. A nice roundup of "where we are now" comes from Phil Plait over at one of my favorite blogs: Bad Astronomy.

And if you're looking for the thrill of discovery a little closer to home, there is a fascinating series of posts over at Scientific American called Dispatches from the Bottom of the Earth . A scientist by the name of Robin Bell is documenting the expedition to study a mountain range hidden beneath the ice sheet in Antarctica. Mountains of Madness anyone?

We also seem to have taken one step closer toward invisibility. The military applications are pretty obvious, but I'm curious. What commercial uses would there be for this technology? So tell me, Monkeys. What would you use an invisibility cloak for?

(And let's try to avoid the "sneaking into the girls' locker room" type shenanigans, for decency's sake. If you need invisibility to see someone naked, it's probably safe to say that your kung fu is not strong. Nor your use of teh Google.)

52 comments:

John said...

Are not all attempts at invisibility crocked by the whole "your eyes don't work if you are invisible" thing?

Unknown said...

Area 51, the really cool bits of the Library of Congress, all those wonderful docs and files sealed away until we are all too old to do anything about it.

Geoff Thorne said...

I would use a large invisibility blanket to hide the clutter in my home from my wife.

Monsterbeard said...

I'd put it on the Millenium Falcon so that we wouldn't get boarded and I wouldn't later be frozen in carbonite, because honestly that would avoid a whole mess of problems.

That, or sneak to the front of all amusement park lines.

Kirk said...

Well...

Glassless windows come to mind. That's insulation for houses and safety for vehicles.

Since it's wide-frequency, putting it into firefighter coats could increase how long they're able to stand the flames. hmmm, add the 'glassless window' for various safety helmets while we're at it here.

Unknown said...

I'd use it to watch TV invisibly. Maybe play invisible X-Box too.

Unknown said...

If invisibility were available to the private sector, civilian security options would become quite amazing, as well as threatened.

Imagine the InfoSec options, be it the improvements to surveillance, counter espionage tactics versus industrial espionage, and even something as simple, as well as insidious, as investigations of employees.

Physical security could have "duck blinds" in important areas, with security response teams hidden from view, roving teams of invisible K-9 patrols, and other bits of insanity.

Of course, there would also need to be counter-invisibility efforts, as the foes could also get ahold of such tech and I could only imagine all the fun that a rogue like Parker from Leverage would have with invisibility.

trail of bread said...

Obviously, for escaping when I have made a fool of myself at dinner parties!

Matt said...

Paintball companies would have one so people could go out into the woods and play in their own version of Predator.

Anonymous said...

I'll bet real commercial applications will include hiding cameras in the middle of the set. Reality TV, sportcasts, action-packed thriller TV series - perhaps all three in one.
Mr. Monkey, what new tricks could you do with staging if you didn't have to worry about keeping cameras off-camera?

Cunningham said...

The methane comes from all those rotting Tharks under the sands of Barsoom.

On the invisibility front, I would use it to discover things...I will leave it at that.

Anonymous said...

Steve Jobs would use it to move the whole R&D division even further out of sight.

Anonymous said...

Hello and good day,

if there is something that makes things invisible, then it would be the downfall for the whole of humanity.
Criminals properties would be discovered and exploited!

Some things should just remain a wish idea!

Shygetz said...

Obvious applications in stage art, such as stage magic, hiding stage hands and puppeteers, etc. Tunable windows with better insulation, more durability, and variable levels of transparency. Invisible cop cars for speed traps. Invisible safes for storing valuables.

Will said...

I'd find out what people really thought of me, no doubt. So would you.

Stellar Drift said...

A far more interesting discussion is with what right some people judge the kung fu of other needy people.

Raka said...

Not to take the whole exercise too seriously, but perfect wearable invisibility will be difficult and expensive for a long time to come, and filled with dire consequences (aforementioned blindness and criminal potentials as well as simple trampling and traffic concerns). But assuming a moderate level of small, cheap, and reliable, I see huge fashion potential. Instead of mirror-shades, window-shades that create "holes" through your head. Sleeves, panels, and patterns that break up the lines of the body or even "sever" entire limbs and segments of the body. Since the goal isn't to render the wearer truly unobservable, any edges and visual artifacts in early-adopter tech can be passed off as features rather than bugs.

The display tech (w/o the corresponding "camera" surfaces) could presumably be used to create animated outfits, from Rorschach patterns to straight-up HD displays. Sufficiently robust wearable computers could dynamically edit the displays as well: look through my torso to see passersby dressed as cowboys, or stripped to walking skeletons, or blithely walking through some surreal landscape.

Many implementations will be swiftly passing fads, certainly. But Hypercolor was a profitable enterprise for a while, and LED-equipped novelty sweatshirts continue to sell well enough to see new designs showing up in all sorts of emporiums of tastelessness. Every stage of development towards a true cloak of invisibility would be doing brisk business in mall kiosks across the country.

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