Are your neighbors being too loud? Relatives always nagging you? That guitar player doesn’t know how to turn down? Or maybe you just want to get away from this thing ? Well, there may be some help!
A research project has proven that man-made meta-materials can be formed to make a cloak that completely isolates things or areas from sound. Sort of an invisibility cloak for audio.
The research paper was published 2 weeks ago by some researchers in Spain. Their research was directed towards designing materials that can hide objects from sound, light (ie vision) and x-rays.
To physically realize the cloak, the Spanish research team calculated how these metamaterials constructed with crystals and cylinders in a periodic array could be used to divert sound completely around an object.
They found that approximately 200 layers of this meta-material created an optimum cloak from sound waves. There is positive progress that indicates that much thinner materials can be produced as the research progresses.
Daniel Torrent and Jose Sanchez-Dehesa are from the Wave Phenomena Group at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, and have furthered the initial work done by researchers at Duke University in North Carolina.
It comes as no surprise that the first application will likely be military, with the material used on navy ships hoping to avoid sonar radar, however sound proofing and sonic manipulation of concert halls and other non-military uses are being considered.
I would love to have some of this material to line my studio with !