The Power of Invisibility, Brought to You by the U.S. Military
The infiltration of American universities by the military is nothing new, but this is: Scientists at UC Berkeley are zeroing in on a way to render people and inanimate objects -- which could include weapons and combat vehicles -- invisible.
The infiltration of American universities by the military is nothing new, but this is: Scientists at UC Berkeley are zeroing in on a way to render people and inanimate objects — which could include weapons and combat vehicles — invisible.
WAIT BEFORE YOU GO...Times Online:
The breakthrough could lead to systems for rendering anything from people to large objects, such as tanks and ships, invisible to the eye — although this is still years off.
Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, whose work is funded by the American military, have engineered materials that can control light’s direction of travel. The world’s two leading scientific journals, Science and Nature, are expected to report the results this week.
It follows earlier work at Imperial College London that achieved similar results with microwaves. Like light, these are a form of electromagnetic radiation but their longer wave-length makes them far easier to manipulate. Achieving the same effect with visible light is a big advance.
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