LIVERPOOL scientists have developed a safety system which could eventually protect buildings from earthquakes.
It uses rings of plastic which can be built into the foundations and then tuned to act as an “invisible cloak” against the shockwaves.
At the moment, the technology could only transfer the waves from one area to another, but eventually it is hoped the system could get rid of them entirely.
Sebastien Guenneau, from the University of Liverpool’s department of mathematics, helped develop the cloak with a team of French scientists.
He said: “We are able to ‘tune’ the cloak to the differing frequencies of incoming shock waves, which means we can divert waves of a variety of frequencies. For each small frequency range, there is a pair of rings which does most of the work.
“These move about a lot, bending up and down, when they are hit by a wave at their particular frequency.
“The waves are then directed outside the cloak where they return to their previous size.
