Good (insert time of day) Folks,
A few days back, Steve and Hans mentioned the idea of using the Active EMS
or EMS Jammers as a cloaking device. Well, sorry to get back to it so late,
but I just thought you might wanna know that this is (of course) impossible.
The hope would be that you could emmit an electro magnetic wave pattern
identical to the ships normal pattern but out of phase with it in such a
manner as to create a destructive interferance pattern. Well, that is
I'm afraid, just not possible.
There is an analogous short story by Arthur C. Clarke called "Silence, Please."
Which appears in "Tales From the White Hart" (Excellent stuff). The idea
there is not EM radiation, but sound waves. (Much easier to deal with.)
So, let's look at the problems with that.
In order to create such an interferance pattern, one would have to know, the
exact position of the listener (to within a wavelength of the sound in
question) as well as how they were moving to take doppler shift into account.
Now you might be able to do that for ONE observer, but if the observer moved,
even slightly, the effect would be lost.
I believe in some airliner designs they were talking about using speakers in
the cabin to make zones of destuctive interferance around passengers heads to
drown out the sound of the aircrafts engines (Unducted fans.) The system was
going to block out just the sound of the engines. However the silence zones
were only localized to the region of the passengers head. There were speakers
placed in the chairs headrest. But it was not possible to get the entire
fusilage of the plane to be such a zone.
Now, to attempt this with light, you might be able to fool one observer, BUT
you would have to know their EXACT position. To within a wavelength of light,
ie down to nanometer acurracy. You would have to know their EXACT speed
relative to you to account for doppler shift. Now, with the ranges of space
combat being what they are, there is NO way you could know this. And if you
did, you might as well fire your weapons, cause your sensor accuracy would
have to be enough to count every cell in the pilot's body.
Furthermore, even if you did manage to fool their passive EMS like this, you
would still run afoul of their densiometers and neutrino sensors. And there
is no way to spoof a neutrino sensor. If you built a decoy drone to spoof it
you would have to install a similar size power plant in order to get it
to fool anyone. (Several million credits for a decoy drone?) Nope.
Yes, we have no cloaking devices.
We have no cloaking devices today. :-)
Scott
Anyone ever dream you were single handledly defending the planet from hordes
of alien icosohedrons and sinister tumbleweeds, armed only with a packet of
Lime Kool-Aide? Maybe it's just me...