Cloak of Invisibility

Neuroethics it ain't.  But here's a fun AP news article about DARPA-funded research to create a cloak of invisibility, reminiscent of the Ring of Gyges discussion in Plato's Republic (and numerous comic book superheroes thereafter). 

It's theory for now, though the article sounds surprisingly optimistic:

"This is very interesting science and a very interesting idea and it is supported on a great mathematical and physical basis," said Nader Engheta, a professor of electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Engheta has done his own work on invisibility using novel materials called metamaterials.

Pendry and his co-authors also propose using metamaterials because they can be tuned to bend electromagnetic radiation — radio waves and visible light, for example — in any direction.

A cloak made of those materials, with a structure designed down to the submicroscopic scale, would neither reflect light nor cast a shadow.

Instead, like a river streaming around a smooth boulder, light and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation would strike the cloak and simply flow around it, continuing on as if it never bumped up against an obstacle. That would give an onlooker the apparent ability to peer right through the cloak, with everything tucked inside concealed from view.

Comments

[Jared Polis]

So cool I want one!!!!!!!