In today’s far-out news from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the scientific envelope-pushers have teamed up with researchers from Duke University and Imperial College in London to develop the blueprint for what is being dubbed an “invisibility cloak.” According to a Thursday announcement from Duke, once devised the “cloak” could have numerous uses from defense applications to wireless communications. “The cloak would act like you’ve opened up a hole in space,” said David R. Smith, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke. All light or other electromagnetic waves are swept from the area and guided by the cloaks’ material to emerge on the other side. Duke scientists and engineers are on their way to producing metamaterials with suitable properties for the cloak. Stay tuned.
Special-ops aviators, a physicist from the intelligence community, and an enlisted Marine with decades of deployments: U.S. Space Command’s military and civilian leaders who spoke May 7 were as likely to come from strictly space backgrounds as not. These are some of the day’s insights from inside the command, which…