Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: NASA TECHNOLOGY HELPS SMITHSONIAN PRESERVE THE STAR-SPANGLED



At 06:41 AM 11/13/98 -0600, Harald Schenk wrote:
Poj wrote:

Like most newspaper and magazine articles about technical subjects, the Der Stern piece inserted fiction for fact. 

No imaging system at any wavelength can image a target that is no longer there.

Seems to me that the presence of an object could be detected from an IR signiture after it is no longer there.  An object radiating heat, will transfer thermal energy to its surroundings, the object is moved, but, for a bit of time, there will exist an IR source that  reveals the fact that an object had been there.

I do a demo where a steel ball is dropped on a piece of heat imaging thermal plastic (or whatever you call the stuff).  The ball heats up a nice little circle of the stuff where it hits and the little impact circles changes color, revealing the site of the ball hit.

Glenn

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Physics Kahuna
Kahuna Physics Institute - on the flapping edge of physics research.