david hobbs
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Ever fancied being invisible?Invisibility cloak a step closer as scientists bend light 'the wrong way'
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:21 PM on 11th August 2008
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The discoveries could one day allow people to become invisible
The ability to suddenly vanish has long been the stuff of science fiction. But scientists believe they are one step closer to creating a invisibility cloak after creating two materials that can bend light the wrong way.
These 'metamaterials' are artificially engineered at the nanoscale level. While one uses a type of fishnet of metal layers to reverse the direction of light, the other uses tiny silver wires.
They were created by two teams working separately under the direction of Xiang Zhang at the University of California, Berkeley with U.S. government funding. One team reported its findings in the journal Science and the other in the journal Nature.
The breakthrough could one day make people and large objects invisible to observers.
'Cloaking may be something that this material could be used for in the future,' researcher Jason Valentine said.
'You'd have to wrap whatever you wanted to cloak in the material. It would just send light around. By sending light around the object that is to be cloaked, you don't see it.'
An invisibility cloak, like that worn by the teenage wizard Harry Potter, is a step closer to becoming a reality
His team made a material that affects light near the visible spectrum, in a region used in fibre optics.
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Raymond
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It sounds great but I have to ask myself, What's the bloody point?
I suppose it will be used by the militrary to use in war.
It's quite possible to become invisible yourself anyway. When I say "invisible" I don't mean in the true sense of the word.
It's an old Witches' trick to become unnoticable, blend in.
When I'm in a hurry and want to nip round the shops without this one and that one stopping me every five minutes for as chat I use this and get back home in no time.
I once walked within 5 feet of my neighbour once and she didn't even notice me, and she notices everything - trust me.
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Bravo
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If you drop it, you'll never find it again
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david hobbs
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| Bravo wrote: | | If you drop it, you'll never find it again |
I sense a bit of eastern philosophy here.
If you give something up you lose it forever.
So the desire not to be seen is the desire not to exist and therefore lose the gift of being?
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Bravo
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No, was an attempt at wit 
Though it was based on a true story of an old friend who had a camouflage pen which he dropped in a field and couldn't find it again 
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Waffle King
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Cloaking Tech? seriosly? how funky, will bring a new meaning to modern warfare in the next hundred years, but i'd bet my piggy bank (about 10p) that the cost to make just those 2 pieces costed billions of $
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