Flare Sci-Fi Forums: Cloaking Device

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Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :

This forum has been fermenting for quite a while, so to kickstart it, why don't we discuss some things that we probably didn't discuss before?

Basic knowledge of Cloaking technology that I remember: generates a field which absorbs light, not reflect it.

Anything else?

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I can resist anything.......
Except Temptation

Posted by The First One (Member # 35) on :

Umm, I don't see how that could be - or else you'd see nothing but a black body of some kind? I always thought that the cloak bent or warped light in some way. . . and with Romulan ships powered by a singularity, I wonder if that helps any?

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"I am greater than the stars for I know that they are up there and they do not know that I am down here." - William Temple

Posted by Aethelwer (Member # 36) on :

It could be just a big huge holographic field generator.

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Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :

Something I saw in my trusty little book, from TNG's Galaxy Child:

Everything in space vibrates in a 21 cm wavelength band. The radiation that the Enterprise gives off can be changed.

What this means that everything is visible since everything in space resonates in a specific wavelength. So when this wavelength is changed, the radiation that the Enterprise gives off is below visual range, which could render it invisible........

An interesting side effect: at a 21 centimeter wavelength, the ship gives off visible light. If this wavelength is decreased, the ship gives off microwaves. At the time, there was a lifeform attached to the ship that was draining the power from the ship's generators. Decreasing the wavelength runs the risk of toasting the entity with microwaves!!!

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I can resist anything.......
Except Temptation

Posted by The First One (Member # 35) on :

It might be helpful if we tied down the ways in which cloaking devices have been penetrated. . .

Neutron radiation emissions (ST:VI) - short-range only
Drive plasma exhaust gases (ST:VI)
Tachyon emissions (TNG, "Redemption")

Others I'm not sure of - spatial distortion (TNG, "Tin Man"); how did the Jem'Hadar in "The Search" find the Defiant? Was that their warp field?

Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :

In our f*cking network, my f*cking computer crashes every time someone else switches off their f*cking computer. I was just about to write the last few words of a treatise about cloaking, when the above occured again.

I wanted to suggest four basic methods of cloaking and discuss their benefits and problems:
1. Just turning off the lights
2. Absorbing radiation
3. Bending radiation
4. Creating a holographic image

Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.

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Early bird catches the gagh. (The Doctor to B'Elanna at 06:00, "Drone")
www.uni-siegen.de/~ihe/bs/startrek/

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

The Jem'Hadar see through cloaks by using an antiproton beam. It is unknown whether this allows them to actually see the cloaked ship, or just the cloak itself. But I suppose it doesn't really matter.

That 21cm thing isn't entirely correct. NOT everything in the universe gives off radiation at that frequency. The only thing that does is hydrogen. And not all hydrogen. Every now and then, the electron in a hydrogen atom flips, releasing energy. An individual hydrogen atom will only do this once in a million years or so. In a cloud of hydrogen gas, on the other hand, there are so many atoms that a constant and measurable amount of radiation is emitted.

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--
They Might Be Giants

Posted by Baloo (Member # 5) on :

Bernd: When I was having problems with system instability, I would compose my reply in notepad (saving frequently) and cut 'n' paste the message once it was complete.

I always thought the cloaking device created some sort of lensing effect close to the ship that bent light around the ship rather like a lense.

--Baloo

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Nobody's perfekt.

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

Perhaps it reads incoming radiation, then projects identical radiation along the same trajectory on the other side of the ship...

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-a certain anonymous administrator

Posted by Baloo (Member # 5) on :

I did a little looking around and found this:

Cloaking Device Technology by Stan Grinter.

I dunno how much of the above is "Canon", but he seems to have done his homework pretty thoroughly.

--Baloo

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I remember how to open a dictionary.

Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :

Let's try to modify that 21cm thing I mentioned earlier.

Light is radiation, radiation is basically a wave, and each wave has frequency and wavelength. So when a surface is visible to the naked eye, it is giving off photonic radiation (fancy name for light). So the object (theoretically) can vibrate at the same wavelength as the ray of light. Changing the wavelength also requires changing the frequency. Light, x-rays, microwaves, UV rays all have different frequency.

So if THIS wavelength is changed, you could basically allow a ship to emit a specific sort of light which is invisible, and cannot be detected by sensors, something similar to x-rays or microwaves, which cannot be seen by the naked eye.

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I can resist anything.......
Except Temptation

Posted by Cargile (Member # 45) on :

and only to sensors calibrated to measure x-rays (dangerous stuff) to microwaves, or unique aliens.

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IF is the middle word in Life.
--Appocalypse Now

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

I'm reaching the dodgy limits of my physics education, but if I recall correctly it isn't the object itself that's moving at that wavelength. The objects emit photons, which themselves exist at a certain wavelength. However, to keep with what you're saying, an energy field surrounding the ship that manipulated emitted photons would work.

That's only one part of what a cloaking device has to do, though. Trek sensors are going to be using all sorts of fancy subspace measurements, which aren't going to be blocked out by simply making the ship invisible. Plus, you need to make the cloak itself undetectable.

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