Forum: Technology

Radiation-soaking metamaterial puts black in the shade

A new blacker-than-black metamaterial absorbs almost all the light that hits it, heralding a new breed of stealth technology.

Evgenii Narimanov of Purdue University in collaboration with Narimanov, Mikhail Noginov and colleagues at Norfolk State University in Virginia have created a perfectly black material. It consists of silver wires 35 nanometres in diameter, embedded in 1-centimetre squares of aluminium oxide, 51 micrometres thick.

Speaking to New Scientist, Narimanov said the primary application of this type of material is likely to be military, for use in "stealth technology in the gigahertz range" - in other words, to build equipment invisible to radar.

Implications?

Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... shade.html

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npad wrote:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627645.000-radiationsoaking-metamaterial-puts-black-in-the-shade.html

A new blacker-than-black metamaterial absorbs almost all the light that hits it, heralding a new breed of stealth technology.

Implications?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5NgX6tPrwg

We need more ABL's Idea

Interesting. It brings a lot of questions to mind:

Energy can either be reflected or absorbed. If absorbed, it cannot be destroyed, it can only change form, and outside of a black hole, nothing simply absorbs energy without re-emitting energy. The energy must be re-radiated at some wavelength in the electro-magnetic spectrum, and that wavelength depends on the temperature ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body ) of the emitting body. At large distances the total radar energy absorbed would be small, raising the temperature of the absorbing material by a correspondingly small amount. That energy will be re-radiated mostly in the infrared. In short, the aircraft will heat up and radiate more thermal energy. (Knowing nothing concrete about the material, I'm surmising all this).

What are its material properties? Is it brittle when cold? How dense is this material? What are the weight penalties to pay for using large amounts of this? Over what frequencies is this material effective? Not enough information.

Which brings to mind a related thought I've had for some time. It seems a possible answer for counter stealth might well lie in infrared search and track. Look for things that are hot.

How about it sounds expensive, and difficult to maintain on a combat aircraft?

TEG

Salute!

We been there, done that.

Second. This should be on the other main forum about Military Aircraft, not here. TC? ASIF? Bird-cranium?

Third, I'd take those Yehudi lights any day for a head-on pass. Maybe even on my belly for dropping a LGB from 30,000 feet in a "strange airplane".

http://jmrc.tripod.com/fa/stealth/stealth1.htm

Gums sends ...

Yehudi lights do not forgive a radar signature or infrared signature unfortunately. Spectrum is the game. All aspects must be considered today.

npad wrote:

A new blacker-than-black metamaterial absorbs almost all the light that hits it, heralding a new breed of stealth technology.

There is nothing new about this -- its "old tech."

As I said a few weeks or months ago, there are plenty of white world papers outside the realm of aeronautical engineering which prove it is quite possible to build aircraft with a zero return.

Salute!

What rat said.

I am extremely familiar with the "spectrum".

Back when the Earth was still cooling and I was a raw nugget, all the ADC interceptors and the new Navy's Phantoms and Crusaders had IRSTS. We are talking mid '60's.

The USAF ADC birds had a "slaved" mode that allowed the radar to be slaved to the IR with the radar off or sweeping back and forth in search mode( really sneaky, as the buff thot we had not seen him yet). When we decided to hose our Genie or AIM-4, then it was radar to track, hold trigger - whooosh!

One day we picked up a B-52 about 80 miles in front, using the IR. Head on. So you have to consider all parts of the "spectrum". Well, audio freq's don't seem as important as they did in the Battle of Britain, heh heh.

Still need to move this thread.

Gums sends...

Forum: Technology

New stealth tech