The Duke Has No Cloak . . .
Just Because A University's PR Department Says It's So, Doesn't Make It So.
"As for Harry Potter-like cloaks that block visible light? 'Don't count on it in the next few decades,' Schurig said."
Duke University's David Shurig speaking to Sean Markey of the National Geographic News, October 19, 2006
Hans Christian Anderson published a very important story in 1837 - The Emperor's New Clothes . Most people are very familiar with it's account of a ruler who is too pretentious to admit that that he was wearing no clothes after two swindler's claimed to have made him a suit from cloth that was invisible to anyone who was either stupid, or not fit for his position. The people of his realm all pretended to be able to see this wonderful suit made from this cloth as well, so that no one would call them stupid. Finally, a little boy spoke up and stated the obvious - that the emperor had no clothes!
Of course we have intimated that we feel that the claim by the Duke University News and Communication Department, that Duke researchers had demonstarted the first working invisibility cloak, was in error. On this page we will officially become like that little boy from the story. The Santa Maria Experiment exhibit, by its mere existence, renders the Duke statement null and void since their's is not a true invisibility cloak and what they have done, in as far as any type of invisibility development is concerned, is more than a full decade after Marshall Barnes conducted and displayed his own successfull research into true invisibility.
Below is the official statement on the subject, from Marshall Barnes:
Preamble: On October 19, 2006, Duke University Department of News and Communication did issue a press release that infringed on the rightful claims of myself and to a lesser degree, I feel, of James Corum, PhD by stating that a team of researchers at its Pratt Engineering School had accomplished "the 1st demonstration of a working invisibility cloak". The proceeding information will substantiate this accusation and enforce the right to counterclaims against the Duke University statement.
1. Definition: invisibility: Impossible to see; not visible: Air is invisible. American Heritage Dictionary. 1 a : incapable by nature of being seen b: inaccessible to view - Merriam-Webster Dictionary. These definitions are but examples of the generally accepted meaning of the word, invisibility. Without a qualifying statement as to what the subject is invisible to, the common expectation is that the invisibility mentioned refers to a state in which something cannot be seen by sight.
2. On October 19th, the Duke University Department of News and Communications did issue a press release heading that infers that its researchers had created something that resulted in a cloak of invisibility to sight, without any qualifier to denote any other type of invisibility other than that which is commonly understood. The headline read in its entirety - "First Demonstration of a Working Invisibility Cloak".
This headline, on its face, by every definition recognized for the state that it described, is wholly inaccurate and a gross exaggeration. This fact is borne out in that same press release in question more than 20 paragraphs later.
3. The development that the Pratt team of David Schurig, Steven Cummer, Jack Mock and Bryan Justice did accomplish involved making a copper object undetectable by microwaves, not something that readily falls under the definition of invisible. There was no reason that the headline could not have accurately described this accomplishment by saying "First Demonstration of Metamaterial Microwave Cloaking", "First Demonstration of Microwave Stealth by Metamaterials" or even "First Demonstration of Microwave Invisibility by Metamaterials", but instead, in a very unscientific and grossly sensationalistic way, it was decided to glitz-up the headline to describe something that the Pratt team had not, in fact, literally accomplished. As a result the headline is completely misleading, if taken at face value.
4. There appears to be a deliberate intention to exaggerate the significance of the Pratt team accomplishment. On one hand, in the 7th paragraph of the release, 2nd sentence, Duke's David R. Smith is quoted as saying "The cloak reduces both an object's reflection and its shadow, either of which would enable its detection." Note that the terms reflection and particularly, shadow, seem to invoke optical effects. Yes, it is commonly known that in electromagnetic physics there are reflections of electromagnetic energy besides that in the visible range, but shadow is not. While much technical clarification is given on other issues, what is meant by shadow is not. In fact the word is never mentioned again. Shadow is such an overwhelmingly visually associated word, particularly to a nonscientific audience that would ultimately read this statement and might not grasp the differentiated significance of the use of the word, or reflection, either. It seems at that point that there might be something happening in the visual range as well. However, deep into the release, at the 20th paragraph, the true situation becomes clear when it states that -
"Although the new cloak demonstrates the feasibility of the researchers' design, the findings nevertheless represent a "baby step" on the road to actual applications for invisibility, said team member Steven Cummer, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke."
This revelation is followed by the further admission, in the 22nd and 23rd paragraphs that -
"Although the same principles applied to the new microwave cloak might ultimately lead to the production of cloaks that confer invisibility within the visible frequency range, that eventuality remains uncertain, the researchers said."
"It's not yet clear that you're going to get the invisibility that everyone thinks about with Harry Potter's cloak or the Star Trek cloaking device," Smith said."
So buried deep within their own press release, the admission that in fact they don't have an "invisibility cloak" finally appears. So why not accurately describe their astounding achievement in the headline? After all, the use of metamaterials to achieve what they have actually done with microwaves, is significant enough. Unfortunately, it's obvious that the Duke University personnel behind its press release, whoever they may be, just wanted to hype the discovery, to remove it from the confines of academic and scientific accuracy, and into the realm of sexy sensationalism. Duke University no more has an invisibility cloak than Harry Potter has a degree from Duke University.
5. The results of the misleading headline are more than evident. By not describing accurately, or at least qualifying their discovery, the Duke News and Communications Department was successful in getting many media, and people across the Internet, to compare their work solely to known concepts in the optical invisibility area, the same area that the Duke release admits that they are "uncertain that they will be able to achieve". Just a few examples include RxPG News http://www.rxpgnews.com/research/article_5088.shtml and Tech Freep http://techfreep.com/duke-scientists-create-invisibility-cloak.htm.
The worst report by far was the October 19 Associated Press article by AP Science Writer Randolph E. Schmid http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/10/19/national/a064936D81.DTL&type=printable
which was then repeated by numerous media outlets, including the Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/spencer/ci_4519509 and Fox News http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2006Oct20/0,4670,CloakofInvisibility,00.html. Schmid repeatedly cites elements from fantasy, involving optical invisibility, and then makes references to the Duke work without explaining the difference. Then it cites physical elements from the visual range and refers to the Duke work. It isn't until the 5th paragraph that Schmid mentions the word "microwaves" but then blends them all together in the 6th paragraph by stating that,
"Cloaking used special materials to deflect radar or light or other waves around an object, like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream. It differs from stealth technology, which does not make an aircraft invisible but reduces the cross-section available to radar, making it hard to track."
This statement clearly makes it seem that the Duke "cloaking" works with any kind of waves, when this is not true. Schmid's ability to properly comprehend the subject at all is easily questionable, when in the next paragraph he states -
"The new work points the way for an improved version that could hide people and objects from visible light."
If the "cloaking" already deflects "radar or light or other waves around an object", how does the "new work" point toward something that Schmid claims that it already does?
Schmid's apparent lack of comprehension here aside, none of this ensuing confusion would have happened if the Duke News and Communications Department had written a proper, accurate and academically responsible press release.
6. The very situation that I cited as a possibility, where people are misled to believe that the Duke research team has discovered "invisibility" based solely on the headline from the Duke News and Communications Department, has occurred in the Wikipedia listing for Duke University where, under the last paragraph listed under "Recent History" it states that, "The first working demonstration of an invisibility cloak was unveiled by Duke researchers in October 2006", with no qualifying commentary as to what that means. It is simply quoting the Duke University headline, which taken at face value, is not true. This exactly goes to the core of my contention with the Duke press release. Anyone not knowing any better would rightfully assume that Duke researchers had accomplished invisibility as it is popularly referred to, in the optical range and not against microwaves.
7. Recognition of the misleading nature of the Duke announcement by an unbiased party is confirmed by the opening paragraph of an October 19th National Geographic News article by Sean Markey that states, "Researchers announced today that they've built the world's first invisibility cloak, although the fine print may disappoint science-fiction fans" http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061019-invisible-cloak.html, and centers around the Department's use of the term "invisibility cloak" which invokes thoughts of the Invisible Man, Harry Potter's invisible cloak and even Star Trek spaceship cloaking. All three of these describe optical invisibility, which the Pratt team has yet to achieve by their own admission. Again, from the Duke press release: "It's not yet clear that you're going to get the invisibility that everyone thinks about with Harry Potter's cloak or the Star Trek cloaking device,' Smith said."
"As for Harry Potter-like cloaks that block visible light? 'Don't count on it in the next few decades,' Schurig said."
10. The placement of the term, metamaterials, in the Duke press release headline would have not only been accurate and to the point - but also would have avoided clashing with research conducted by James Corum, PhD, formerly of the Battelle Memorial Institute and described in his 1994 paper, Tesla's Egg of Columbus, Radar Stealth, the Torsion Tensor, and the Philadelphia Experiment. In said paper Corum http://www.teslasociety.com/corum.htm, who has a PhD in electrical engineering, was able to produce a radar cloaking effect using a rotating magnetic field based on Nikola Tesla's Egg of Columbus invention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus#Tesla.27s_Egg_of_Columbus. According to one bio, Corum has been cited as a "National Treasure" by the Office of the US Secretary of Defense for his work on the DARPA National Panel of Radar Experts on Ultra-WideBand Radar and Phenomenology". This shows that the only "first" that the Duke research team has accomplished is that of the first microwave cloaking by use of metamaterials, a fact that the Duke press release could have easily conveyed but it is now clear that all parties involved at Duke chose to do otherwise.
11. Furthermore, by insinuating that they had in fact achieved a breakthrough in the optical range, where the term "invisibility" is normally applied, Duke University has inadvertently stepped into my own personal field of research where I have produced the type of effects that they can't. In March of 1994, prompted in part by technical advice given by a former Chemical Abstracts scientist, I determined to try to apply the scientific method to a portion of the testimony of an anonymous scientist interviewed in the book, Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility. The passage in question reads -
"One of the problems involved was that the ionization created by the field
tended to cause an uneven refraction of the light. The original concepts
that were brought down to us before the conference were laid out very
nicely and neatly, but both Albrecht and Gleason and I warned that
according to our calculations the result would not be a steady mirage
effect, but rather a 'moving back and forth' displacement caused by certain
inherent tendencies of the AC field which would tend to create a confused
area rather than a complete absence of color."
This passage told me precise physical details. It identified that the invisibility attempted would be a "mirage effect". It also identifies that an undesirable result might be "uneven refraction of light", which means that the opposite would be required to achieve the proper "mirage effect". Acting like any serious researcher would, I then proceeded to identify materials that would help me test this claim that refracted light could produce an invisibility mirage. I found a material that diffracted light and got it to in fact produce invisibility and transparency effects in the optical range, thus proving that at least in theory, the anonymous account was accurate. I conducted a series of tests, some photographed and others videotaped, that demonstrated what this diffraction material could do, with some modifications, using the knowledge that I had obtained. My targets included:
a. A full scale replica of Christopher Columbus' Santa Maria ship, which I made to appear 85% optically invisible.
b. A green marker cap that I made appear 95% to 99% optically invisible.
c. A telephone pole that I made appear 85% optically invisible.
d. A black spool of thread that I made appear 75% optically invisible.
I also researched modifications that would lead to practical applications, while at the same time I began to share my discovery with the world.
12. The timeline of significant events where my discovery was published and demonstrated follows:
a. 3/20/94: First press release issued.
b. 5/12/94: First article ever published mentioning the invisibility accomplishment, The Call & Post newspaper
c. 5/94: First radio news report citing invisibility accomplishment, WOSU AM news with reporter Andrew Marcelain
d. 6/94: First ever photograph published, July 1994 issue of Purpose Magazine, of the Santa Maria vanishing
e. 10/95: First national TV appearance, Danny!, the Danny Bonaduce TV talk show . A black spool of thread was made to appear transparent to sight.
f. 11/11/95: The second photo of the Santa Maria vanishing published in a newspaper, the Columbus Times
g. 3/28/96: First international lecture and video presentation, the X Chronicles UFO and Alien Symposium, St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada.
h. 4/2/96: The first international article published with a photo of the Santa Maria vanishing, in The Sun
i. 5/1/96: First international radio interview, Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
j. 5/2/96: First scientific presentation, a colloquium sponsored by the Biological and Physical Sciences Department of Columbus State Community College, facilitated by Professor Jean Claude Ba, PhD.
k.5/99 The story, with photos of the Santa Maria and the black spool of thread, first hits the internet after A&E's The Unexplained suppressed the existence of the experiments as part of a case of skeptical fraud.
l. 5/99 First foreign TV interview and video of invisibility tests on CityTV Toronto's Space 2859 with Michelle Dudas, now of Space http://www.spacecast.com/spaceblog_622.aspx.
Notice, nearly all of these events are more than a decade before the Duke University's so-called "first demonstration". Since that time I have been able to move beyond the use of the diffraction material as a mere demonstrative tool to illustrate how optical invisibility would look, and into the practical applications area, using modifications for the obvious and not so obvious uses in the fields of paramilitary, military, security and law enforcement.
Because of the fact that I know how to, in a word, weaponize it, and because of proprietary business controls, I will not elaborate further on any of these technical details. I will instead let the considerable body of historical evidence of my achievement speak for itself. Unlike the Duke research team, I have been researching invisibility in the visual range as a phenomena in its own right. They seem to be fixated on using metamaterials to try to achieve invisibility. My success was more than a decade ahead of their "baby step" which has yet to reach the maturity of the visible range. This approach of mine is already weaponized and of practical use. By their own words, their approach won't even be ready "in the next few decades", yet they made the claim of having "the first demonstration of a working invisibility cloak October 19th, 2006!
Either they have it or they don't. It would appear that Duke researchers want to apply the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics to their research results. Beyond this state of indeterminacy, Duke's David R. Smith says on his home page http://www.ee.duke.edu/~drsmith/ under "Transformation Optics" in his Overview section that -
"Coordinate transformations allow us to control light in new and dramatic ways. By implementing these transformations in complex materials, we can realize an entirely new class of electromagnetic structures. An example is the 'invisibility cloak' (emphasis mine) that we have designed and built!"
The link that he provides, to learn about this invisibility cloak that he has built, goes to the article, Blueprint for Invisibility which begins with "Our recent publication in Science explores a new electromagnetic design approach. Invisibility is possible, but...".
After a long and winding discussion on sci-fi invisibility, Smith finally admits the truth, in the beginning of the 26th paragraph, next to an image of another faux invisibility claim - the invisible coat of the Tachi Laboratory from Japan:
This complaint, on Smith's part, is the height of hypocrisy. If the Duke press release had been written properly, there would have been no comparisons to Harry Potter's cloak. It would have been nice if Smith and his team had used some of that realism, that he so desires, in describing their own work instead of applying the Schroedinger's Cat model to it - they have an invisibility cloak, but they don't. They've built it - but it's 30 years away. This type of Necker Cube science is not only patently ridiculous, it's disgraceful. The only reason it has been tolerated is because it is believed by many until now that Duke's effort is the closest thing so far to something that is still considered to be impossible, i.e. true optical invisibility. Duke's Pratt engineering team stretching the truth in this manner has been forgiven because in the sight of many, in both the media and the scientific world, the claim of invisibility is made with a caveat, however camouflaged that it might be. This wink-wink, nudge-nudge approach to science is without academic merit and will ultimately stand as a black mark against Duke's reputation that, for them, won't go away as their problems with their rugby team did. Unlike, disbarred prosecutor Mike Nifong, I don't level charges unless I have the evidence to back them up, and the backbone to do it.
The field of scientific research is in a poor state of affairs indeed, when scientists feel the need to exaggerate their accomplishments to get publicity, or for any other reason. This matter should prove to anyone, who thought that Lee Smolin's The Trouble with Physics was exaggerating the current problems of the academic science world, that he was merely scratching the surafce. Even I am taken aback by it all. Again, if the Duke Pratt team and the News and Communications Department had stuck to proclaiming what they do have - a metamaterial shield against microwaves, I would be all for it. But by claiming that they have the first working invisibility cloak, I have no choice but to defend my own claim, and established historic record, by all means at my disposal - allowed by law.
In closing, the public will decide for themselves who had the real first "invisibility cloak"; although I have no doubt that now, the answer is already quite visible.
We think that when the researchers at Duke University's Pratt Engineering School can get their little metamaterial, electromagnetic shield, to do what Marshall Barnes has, displayed below, then and only then should they be allowed to claim that they have an invisibility cloak!
Below: A green, opaque marker cap under the influence of invisibility cloaking and more than 95% invisible to sight. Faint outlines are all that is evident with a near total abscence of color. (C) Marshall Barnes, All Rights Reserved.
