August 11, 2008 12:01 AM PDT
Posted by Chris Matyszczyk

Today, your eyes might not deceive you. But soon, they very well might.

Some extremely clever people at Cal (the one at Berkeley) have created a material that can control the direction in which visible light travels.

Apparently, this mystery material, some details of which might be revealed in Science and Nature magazines this week (People and OK weren't interested), deflects light around an object as perceived by an insouciant eye.

"In the case of invisibility cloaks or shields, the material would need to curve light waves completely around the object like a river flowing around a rock," the leader of the Cal researchers, Xiang Zhang, told London's Times newspaper.

In essence, you are looking at, say, the Empire State Building or a John Malkovich-piloted Boeing 747 full of nasty missiles. If these objects are coated with the material, your eyes will see light from behind them, hence creating the illusion that the object in question simply isn't there. I know that there are terrible consequences that may leap to mind in these examples.

For the more technically-minded amongst you, I can tell you that the material the scientists created had to have elements engineered to within 0.00000066 of a meter. This appears to be in a realm that might make wafers suddenly feel ridiculously overweight.

For the rest of us humans, the first twitch of the imagination goes towards whether we would prefer ourselves to be able to disappear. (We would have to calculate distance very carefully, as the material would not mask our body odors, for example. And, if we allowed people too close, they might just bump into us all the time. This is one of the Invisible Man's dilemmas in movies and TV shows.)

However, one's second twitch would be to consider whether there are other things we would very much like to pretend don't exist. Because they are, quite simply, not good for the eyes and, therefore, the environment.

My list would include Buckingham Palace, the Hotel Gansevoort in New York, the whole of Washington Avenue in Miami Beach, most of Warsaw (especially the sky), La Guardia Airport and perhaps even Michael Jackson and Newt Gingrich.

What would your list look like?

Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10013128-71.html

I wonder how how long it will be before the military gets its hands on this project and classifies it. It wouldn't be long after that and we could have invisible predator jones flying the skies watching our every move, or squadrons of invisible planes. One might even figure out how to make entire buildings or even bases invisible as well.

I knew metal gear solid wasn't fake

I don't think they'll ever be able to make anything invisible. Especially not people or large things. But if they do, think about that asian guy on the bus that cut that dudes head off. What if he had a suit that made him invisible... People's heads would be getting cut off everywhere. That would suck. I'd like an invisible suit, an invisible katana, and some invisible guns. Fuck that would be awesome.

First thing I thought of when I read the thread!

Stealth camo is here!

Now I just need a sword, and a exoskeleton.

This is some very exciting news for me.

Soon everyone will be walking around invisible.

this... this would be MADNESS!!!

Chances are the military will take this technology and not let ANYONE else have it.

I can see it now. Invisible police officers, everywhere, watching our every move.

Big Brother just got a new toy.

Is this real? I mean, it IS in the section "technically INCORRECT" if anybody noticed...

If it is real, I'll get two.

__________________

Chances are if this is public knowledge, it doesn't work very well and/or the government already has it in use.

True.