…One Nation, Invisible…

Just five months after publishing the theory that a kind of invisibility can be achieved by shielding an object with special metamaterials, researchers have published results of an experiment that validates their hypothesis. Invisibility! How great is that?!

Well, not really invisible, but close, and they’re getting good results. Check out a related Scientific American article here. Essentially, electromagnetic waves will warp around an object situated in an enclosure made of Invisibilium, or whatever name they’ll come up with for the special lattice structural material. So if you point a flashlight at this object (or the rays of the sun fall on it), you won’t be able to see it, because the light waves just bend around it like water moving around a rock in a stream (see image above). One theoretical drawback: a person inside the enclosure wouldn’t be able to see out. A Romulan Bird of Prey would have a terrible time trying to navigate with their Cloaking Device enabled, let alone blast Captain Kirk and the Enterprise to smithereens with a trans-warp torpedo.

The lingering question for me is, will not the metallic enclosure surrounding our “invisible” object be visible? Is this the same principle as putting a penny in a shoe box and then saying that penny is now invisible? The mind reels.