InventorSpot

Would you rather have x-ray vision or be invisible?

Our guest blogger, Emily Swan, graduated with highest honors from Butler University in Indianapolis. After school, she worked in public relations for Borders Group Inc, the book, music, and movie retailer. She's since jumped the PR fence and now works as a freelance writer. An avid science junkie, we hope you'll enjoy her quirky (and sometimes philosophical) takes on modern gadgets. Emily lets us in on the news that every person's fantasy about being invisible may come true in the near future.

Here's Emily's article for AmericanInventorSpot.com:

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The fantasy of becoming invisible has long occupied storytellers. Capes, shields, potions, rings, and hats have made characters from Bilbo Baggins to the Greek god Perseus disappear from sight to pursue their daring agendas uninhibited. Invisibility ranks with time travel and x-ray vision in our psyche; it's something we dream about, but catalog as science fiction. But is it? This week, a team of researchers working jointly at Duke University and Imperial College London announced they successfully tested the first invisibility cloak. Click here to see the official announcement on Duke's web site.

Invisible CloakThe cloaking device is fiberglass and copper metamaterial that measures 13 centimeters by one centimeter. Metamaterial essentially gains its electromagnetic properties from its configuration rather than its composition. Currently metamaterials are limited in size by the radiation waves that associate with them, but physicists and engineers continually work toward expanding the breadth and depth of the range for broader functionality. The cloak unveiled at Duke University this week successfully hid a copper cylinder from electromagnetic waves, rendering it virtually invisible. To see a demonstration, go to youtube.com.

Invisible CloakDavid Schurig, a physicist at Duke, described the process like this: "You can think of it visually as like water flowing around a rock smoothly. If you look downstream from the rock, the stream has been restored to its original flow pattern, and you can't tell that the water flowed around a rock by looking at the water." The cloak doesn't hide light, but incorporating that feature is one of the next challenges scientists face in advancing the technology. But even the technology as it stands now, blocking electromagnetic detection, has a wide range of potential uses, not least military applications. Current stealth technology allows planes and other devices to avoid most radar recognition, but it's not flawless. Equipping items with a cloaking device that avoids electromagnetic discovery would make them completely undetectable except by sight.

Another related article came to my attention this week. It covers invisibility as part of a larger exhibition on science running this fall at the Royal Academy of Science in London. This technique of rendering objects invisible involves nanotechnology and tackles the visibility of light on a molecular level. It doesn't use metamaterial, but rather quantum physics principles applied in a controlled lab environment warp the energy waves of electrons so that they neutralize to the point of allowing light to pass through unobstructed. The object then appears transparent to the observer.

Only a minute or two of thought is needed for us to think of multiple possible uses, both good and bad, for this kind of technology. Do we want to live in a world that incorporates and factors invisibility? I don't know the answer, and as with all cutting-edge science we will tread thrilling and frightening ethical lines. Regardless, the technology is there, and maybe someday we'll be able to buy our own cloaking device on eBay. One can only dream.

Emily Swan
Guest Blogger
http://www.AmericanInventorSpot.com