Invisibility

In an earlier post in this blog and on the FOX News website, an article was shown that in 2007 the British Military made a 60 ton Challenger Tank invisible. According to the article, the tank moved in a field right in front of the observers but not a single person knew a tank was present in the field. No one is entirely sure how this was done, some say it was camera and projector technology at its finest but so far the British government and the scientist related to the experiment, John Pendry denies it ever happened and the government states, "No Comment". Two years have passed since than and other technologies have come into the spotlight, invisibility is a lot closer than we actually think and it could be possible that the British did discover something.

Man has always tried to master ways of stealth and invisibility. Yet, in the beginning we did not have much to use in our attempts except simple trickery and illusion. A great example is of the Japanese ninja's of past who used their enemies own eyes against them. A normal person only has 60 degrees of vision with 100 degrees of peripheral vision. Yet, when the eye focuses on something that vision narrows to a mere 6 degrees, this is key moment they would strike. In addition, they would take advantage of the moving eye. Whenever you look around, you are blind at that time. The motion blur that is occurring is called Psychotic Suppression in which the brain just fills in information by its self, effectively making us blind when our eyes are darting around. For about 40 minutes a day, we technically see nothing because of this.

About 500 years later, during World War II, we see some of the first advances in invisibility. A method called deception camouflage was used to trick the German Luftwaffe into bombing the wrong targets. During the war, Churchill ordered Jasper Maskelyne and his group of followers dubbed the "magic gang" to conceal over 125 miles of land from German air forces. Over night they would a fake port of Alexandria with all the convincing buildings and military points to trick them. In addition, to mask the 120 miles of the Suez Canal, Jasper used search lights with a spinning mirror array within their lights aimed at the canal. This would reflect off the water creating the illusion of cities, towns and a canal that was not even there.

What path to technology only found in science fiction would be complete without its conspiracy theory. During WWII, the Americans took on another project at an attempt to make their ships radar invisible, codenamed Project Rainbow and later known as the Philadelphia Experiment. A letter with a proposal from Einstein was sent to the Navy. They would later take this to the next step and perform a full scale test. The ship was mounted with massive field coils that generated huge EM fields. On October 28, 1943 the test began. Shortly after starting it, a green fog envelops the ship and the ship vanishes along with the fog. They cut power shortly after to discover it reappears a distance away out of the same green fog. Supposedly, people on the ship went crazy, deranged, some disappeared completely and even some men were embedded into the ship itself. (This is not a confirmed event but the letters from Einstein hold some weight toward it)

Its present day and how far have we come since than? The answer is quite far. With the discovery of meta materials, materials that are man made through a combination of other materials to create an effect that otherwise would not be present in nature, such as light bending. Notes made by scientist John Pendry, the same man who denied the tank experiment, show how to make such a material and how it works. David Smith at Duke University has made a material that bends microwaves which would effectively hide anything within the material from radar. Proffesor Shang at the University of California Berkley has created a meta material that bends light at an optical frequency, in other words makes it invisible. In the video below, these technologies are explained in much greater detail. In addition, a 3rd technology known as virtual invisibility is demonstrated which might be the technology used on the British Challenger tank.



The science is there and it is sound. Within the video experiments are run and shown to proof that they due in fact work. The scope of how complex this technology is is indeed staggering yet to produce such items actually costs almost nothing. A personal cloak would be easy and cheap to produce once the "right device" (Smith) is used.

With great power comes even greater responsibility. Invisibility is something that will most likely come to be and it take people in good character to use it wisely. The future of the world will be changed drastically once this technology makes it out of development. Armies can move unseen, weapons undetectable, radar and infrared will be useless. The government could theoretically spy on anyone, cops could be at every street corner and we would not know. Civilians with cloaks could have the potential to ensure disaster. Crimes can be committed much easier and stalkers have a whole new world to explore. Invisibility is something can lead to more bad than good in any respects to it. It has little use except for defensive measures and secret aggressive actions. You can not stop what can not be seen. Most people fear nuclear Armageddon, what about the man they can not see in their room?

That's Impossible - YouTube (In 10 minute parts, automatically moves onto next part)

Sources:
Bland, Eric. "Invisibility Cloak Closer Than Ever to Reality: Discovery News." Discovery Channel : Science, History, Space, Tech, Sharks, News. Discovery, 15 Jan. 2009. Web. 19 Sept. 2009. .
"FOXNews.com - British Defense Researchers Create Invisible Tank - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News." Breaking News | Latest News | Current News - FOXNews.com. 01 Nov. 2007. Web. 19 Sept. 2009. .
"Thats Impossible." Thats Impossible. History Channel. HIST. Www.youtube.com. Www.youtube.com, 05 Aug. 2009. Web. 19 Sept. 2009. .