Why God, why? Just as Man was on the cusp of a real-life invisibility cloak—otherwise known as the gateway to the secrets of international government and the girl's locker room—some stupid-head Chinese scientists have already learned to thwart it. The theoretical "anti-cloak" would be a piece of material with identical optical bending properties to the original cloak. When the anti-cloak comes into contact with the invisibility cloak, it would bend light in such a way that the cloak becomes partially visible again.

Read More »

It seems like invisibility is on everybody's mind these days, what with the potential for it jump out of science fiction and into reality a few steps closer thanks to the hard work of a bunch of egghead scientists. But in the world created by this cool nes Peugeot ad, all cars are invisible. Well, all but the one they're selling, of course. I don't care about some mediocre French car, but the visuals in this ad are pretty top notch. Check it out. [Space Invaders via Notcot]

Read More »

University of California scientists today announced that significant progress has been made toward developing "metamaterials" for use in a legitimate invisibility cloak. The researchers, led by mad scientist Xiang Zhang, were able to demonstrate for the first time that they could cloak 3-D objects with these materials. As the article notes, and as we've shown here on Gizmodo in the past, previous attempts at invisibility were successful only with tiny two-dimensional objects. Not anymore, as this heavily military-backed project is well on its way to producing superhero special abilities, today.

Read More »

Japan's been tooling around with versions of invisibility cloaks for years now, but they seem to have finally perfected it. Theoretically. By using "left-handed metamaterials" to make electromagnetic control devices, researchers can generate lenses that either reflect no light or have a perfect focal point—the end result of which lets you create a perfect invisibility cloak to skulk around Tokyo with. If you're really interested in the physics of the situation, you can head over to Nikkeibp, but we're pretty sure the illustration above will explain the matter just fine. [Nikkeibp]

Read More »

Scientists at the Britannia Royal Navy College are working hard to make the idea of an invisible ship a reality using metamaterials that refract light in such a way that it "bends" around an object, making it appear as if it were invisible. This would only account for viewing with the naked eye however—naturally radar cloaking would be an important part of the equation. However, it appears that this technology may be able to accomplish a lot more.

Read More »

We wrote about this a long, long time ago, but the invisible bookshelf that magically props up your reading material is now available from ThinkGeek at $US12.99—ten bucks cheaper than it was before. [ThinkGeek]

Patton would've killed for a battalion of these babies. The British Army's testing an "invisible" tank that works like the invisibility jacket Susumu Tachi put out a couple of years ago. Basically a camera/projector setup throws images of the surroundings onto the tank, letting you see through it, so it's not quite the kind of future-y awesomeness DARPA's working on. Yet, anyway, according to the project head: "The next stage is to make the tank invisible without them - which is intricate and complicated, but possible." Add a couple of legs and a rail gun, and we'll see Metal Gears walking around in no time. [Daily Mail via Geekologie]