"For thousands of years people have worn shimmering silk to stand out in a crowd. Within the next few years people could wear silk to become invisible in a a crowd..."
http://news.discovery.com/tech/silk-invisibility-cloak.html
Also see http://infinitylabs.net/2006/07/03/invisible-cloaks-in-action-video-demonstrations/ for videos demonstrating a cloak.
How is this possible? What other attempts have been made to invent such devices? What do we know from sensation & perception section of the text that might help someone develop such a device (i.e., what do we already know about the visual system that would help us understand/know how to build this)?
I think it will be interesting to see what other kind of applications scientists think of for the cloak. I would of never thought about using it in the biomedical field in the ways they mentioned. The way light interacts with the silk metamaterial they described makes complete sense in that it can absorb or reflect all light of different wavelengths but how it interacts with the human body is baffling! Should be interesting to see how long it takes to invent something that works for even the smaller wavelengths as they say is possible.
Obviously I picked this article because I am a Harry Potter fan and when I heard about an invisibility cloak I had to "see it to believe it." The article talks about how the cloak works in two major ways.
The first way was to put a camera behind the cloak and it would act as a large projection screen and the second way is basically just bending light around the cloak. For the second way the material in the cloak is key, it is a silk metamaterial (like the other comment states). What actually happens is (this part amazed me) they take a tiny piece of silk fabric ( 1 cm) and stencil 10,000 gold resonators to that one centimeter piece of silk fabric.
The article states that silk is biocompatible with the human body, therefore, it could be used for implants in the human body and the body would actually accept it. The major example, which hit home to me due to family members and friends being diabetic, is that it could be used for glucose levels in the body so when they are low or high the silk would change color. Therefore, diabetics would no longer have to test their blood levels every time before eating.
This article was very interesting and I look forward to seeing the medical progress with this invention.
I think this is a great discovery! I wasn’t aware that the researchers that study such techniques are referred to as metamaterial scientists. I think this will really benefit people with diabetes as I’ve seen first hand the difficulties with obtaining accurate glucose levels consistently. I also didn’t know all the qualities of silk and how it reacts with the human body.
That is an awesome discovery! Especially the diabetic part. Although it should be used with caution as I can see some downfalls to it too!