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LONDON (Reuters) - It's unlikely to occur by swallowing a pill or donning a special cloak, but invisibility could be possible in the not too distant future, according to research published on Monday. Harry Potter accomplished it with his magic cloak. H.G. Wells' Invisible Man swallowed a substance that made him transparent. But Dr Ulf Leonhardt, a theoretical physicist at St Andrews University in Scotland, believes the most plausible example is the Invisible Woman, one of the Marvel Comics superheroes in the "Fantastic Four." "She guides light around her using a force field in this cartoon. This is what could...

NEW materials that can change the way light and other forms of radiation bend around an object may provide a way to make objects invisible, researchers said. Two separate teams of researchers have come up with theories on ways to use experimental "metamaterials" to cloak an object and hide it from visible light, infrared light, microwaves and perhaps even sonar probes. Their work suggests science-fiction portrayals of invisibility, such as the cloaking devices used to hide space ships in Star Trek, might be truly possible. Harry Potter's cloak or The Invisible Man of films and fiction might be a bit...

Scientists have taken the first steps towards creating a Harry Potter-style cloak of invisibility. Professor John Pendry, from Imperial College London, said that it may not take long to develop an invisible fabric - assuming there is sufficient research into the technology. "If there is adequate funding, I'd have thought it would take in the order of five years," he said. "You could build a shed out of this material and drive a tank in there, or a motor car, or hold a party inside it, and once you close the door everything it contains would be completely invisible." The...

Scientists gain insight into invisibility through a complex superlens By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 03/05/2006) The Klingons used it to make their Bird of Prey spacecraft invisible. The Romulans used cloaking too and variants of this stealth technology hid the nasty alien in the Predator films and have been mentioned in Star Wars, Doctor Who and more besides. Scriptwriters will be pleased to discover that this science fiction idea is deemed today to be closer to science fact than we realised, according to a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences....

Today scientists at Imperial College in London and the University of Neuchatel, in Switzerland, will unveil their latest attempt to achieve this vision. Details of the mechanism were being closely guarded last night. However, an invitation to hear more about the project revealed tantalising hints. A briefing note headed “New material developed to see through solid matter” said: “Researchers have created a new optical effect that means that solid objects, such as walls, could one day be rendered transparent.” The effect is believed to involve the development of a material that exploits

High-tech cloaking machines could one day render very small objects nearly invisible and perhaps improve military stealth technology, scientists said Monday. The idea is straight out of science fiction -- cloaking technology made Romulan spaceships disappear in Star Trek. A humble version of the device could become a reality, according to Nader Engheta and Andrea Alu of the University of Pennsylvania. But don't expect to hide yourself or your spaceship anytime soon, at least not in the standard sense of invisible. In practical terms, the research is more likely to lead to improved technical and research devices, and even these...

John Kerry's Winning Formula: Invisibility By Dick Morris FrontPageMagazine.com | June 28, 2004 Senator John Kerry is becoming the first modern dark-horse candidate — in an old sense of the term. The phrase was used to describe 19th century presidential candidates whose principle virtue was their absence of a national image. And that's been the key to Kerry's success so far. When the brickbats were being hurled at Howard Dean, Kerry was quite content to keep his head down and minimize his visibility. He wisely avoided getting in the way as Dean self-destructed. Kerry became known as the un-Dean, a...

The invisible material is made of thousands of tiny beads The inventor of an "invisibility" cloak has said that his next project will be to develop the technology to allow people to see through walls. Susumu Tachi, who showed off the cloak at an exhibition in San Francisco earlier this month, said he was hopeful of providing a way to provide a view of the outside in windowless rooms. "This technology can be used in all kinds of ways, but I wanted to create a vision of invisibility," he told BBC World Service's Outlook programme. "My short-term goal would be,...

<p>Next-gen optical camouflage is busting out of defense labs and into the street. This is technology you have to see to believe.</p> <p>Invisibility has been on humanity's wish list at least since Amon-Ra, a diety who could disappear and reappear at will, joined the Egyptian pantheon in 2008 BC. With recent advances in optics and computing, however, this elusive goal is no longer purely imaginary. Last spring, Susumu Tachi, an engineering professor at the University of Tokyo, demonstrated a crude invisibility cloak. Through the clever application of some dirt-cheap technology, the Japanese inventor has brought personal invisibility a step closer to reality.</p>

NEW YORK - A University of Tokyo professor claims he and his research team have developed a system that can make you 'invisible.' Engineering Professor Susumu Tachi is in the early stages of technology that he says will eventually enable camouflaged objects to be virtually transparent by wearing an optical device. Professor Tachi demonstrated the technology on Wednesday. In a photo of graduate student Kazutoshi Obana, it appears as if three men walking in the background can be seen 'through' Obana's green overcoat. The retroreflective material of the coat acts as a screen and gives a transparent - or invisible...

Japanese scientist invents 'invisibility cloak' A Japanese scientist has developed a coat which appears to make the wearer invisible. The illusion was part of a demonstration of optical camouflage technology at Tokyo University. It is the brainchild of Professor Susumu Tachi who is in the early stage of research he hopes will eventually make camouflaged objects virtually transparent. The photograph was taken through a viewfinder that uses a combination of moving images taken behind the wearer to give a transparent effect. It's hoped the technology will be useful for surgeons frustrated their own hands and surgical tools can block their...