• Question: Will there ever be an invention to make someone invisible?

    Asked by gigi123 to Helen, Ian, rhysphillips on 23 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Rhys Phillips

      Rhys Phillips answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      Depends what you mean – I’ve seen some cool videos where they’ve made a sort of “invisibility cloak” which uses cameras to film what’s behind the person and displays that on the front so it looks a bit like they aren’t there. But it’s not really making them invisible of course.

    • Photo: Helen Fletcher

      Helen Fletcher answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      Well according to Harry Potter there already is, isn’t there? One idea in the real world is to make a cloak from parts that are so small, they are smaller than the wavelength of light. Then the rays of light would be made to travel around them rather than reflecting back for our eye to form an image. Scientists have managed to do this in 2D, but not in 3D yet..

      We’ve often tried to make ourselves ‘invisible’ to an extent through camouflage- like these war ships: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage

      Most of these are ideas are stolen from other animals, which are much more expert at this than us! They use lots of clever techniques, like changing colour to blend in with their background, or using patterns to break up their shape so their prey can’t recognise what they are. Some even pretend to be other things! Check out this insect- he’s doing a pretty good job:

      So you don’t really need an invention, you just need to dress up like a tree.

    • Photo: Ian van der Linde

      Ian van der Linde answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      Yes there will. The military would love to accomplish this, so there are probably millions of pounds being spend investigating the options. I think they’ve made some progress at very tiny scales, but completely cloaking a large object will be very challenging. To do this in a primitive sort of way, you’d need a suit that had a fine mesh of both light receivers and light emmitters, and motion trackers so that it knew the exact position of all your limbs. Then you’d need some software that could sample the incoming light on one side, calculate which point on the other side it would match up with if you were not there (which will depend on your current posture), and then display the same light on the emmitter there.

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