Invisible
Wondering whether the $50 Armani suit you bought in that alley in Hong Kong is the genuine article? Soon, there may be a definitive way of knowing. A new system has been developed, in which designer-specific invisible patterns can be woven into fabric. Read More
A disused smoke stack in the town of Kassel, more or less at the very heart of Germany, has undergone a peculiar transformation. Glance up at the tower and the you will be met by the disarming sight of alternating floating and missing sections of chimney stack, courtesy of a bold intervention, named Sky Stack, by asdfg Architekten. Read More
Pranav Mistry, Pattie Maes and Liyan Chang from MIT's Media Lab have managed to create an invisible computer mouse for just a few dollars. Using an Infrared laser and tracking camera, the Mouseless system registers and interprets a user's hand movement and translates it into onscreen actions such as cursor movement and button clicking. Read More
An Apple application had been unearthed detailing plans to develop invisible touch, pressure sensitive controls. Using similar technology currently found in Apple’s Magic Mouse, the concept designs show plans for buttons which could be implemented on a next-generation range of MacBooks, iPods or Apple TV remotes. Read More
A Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak is one more step closer to reality thanks to the work of a research team at the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF) in the Netherlands, which has successfully harnessed the magnetic field of light to develop meta-materials that can deflect light in every possible direction. Read More
Brickhouse Security’s Micro Bluetooth Earpiece is so small it actually fits inside the ear canal to allow covert two-way communication via any Bluetooth mobile phone or two-way radio. Its size means that a battery is out of the question, so the tiny device is powered by magnetism, which is also used to remove the earpiece from the ear canal. Read More
Over the last few years we’ve covered the development of “invisibility cloaks” using metamaterials – man-made structured composite materials exhibiting optical properties not found in nature that can guide light to achieve cloaking and other optical effects. In 2006, scientists at Duke University demonstrated in the laboratory that an object made of metamaterials can be partially invisible to particular wavelengths of light - not visible light, but rather microwaves. A few groups have even managed to achieve a microscopically-sized carpet-cloak. Now researchers have developed software that can show what such a cloaked object will actually look like. Read More
Plans for the installation of wind farms the world over are being delayed or abandoned due to objections from the aviation community or air defense interests. The problem is that when it comes to low flying aircraft or wind turbines, conventional radar has a bit of an identity crisis - not being able to tell the difference. Recent tests in the UK of "stealth" turbine technology could provide a solution. Read More
Harnessing the unique properties of metamaterials, researchers in China have recently published a work detailing the implementation of a thin air, broadband and remotely controllable 'invisible gateway' that is able to shield all types of electromagnetic waves while letting through all other physical objects. Read More
Mathematicians at the University of Utah have recently announced they have elaborated an innovative way to shield two-dimensional objects from all types of waves, from electromagnetic to those caused by natural events like earthquakes and tsunamis, leading the way to a completely new approach to achieving invisibility. Read More
