Light-bending material makes you invisible! Or not!
Researchers have apparently created a material
, currently only on a microscopic scale, that can bend visible light around a three-dimensional object, thus rendering it almost invisible.
Except that it actually can’t do that. In fact, since the technology is based in part on the principle of reflection, it might make the wearer more visible (since the human eye is rather good at picking out reflective flashes).
What it could possibly do, however, is allow for materials with a negative index of refraction, which would in turn allow for several neat innovations concerning the use of light: “light can be focused to smaller volumes. This implies that we would be able to illuminate cellular machinery at the level of individual molecules or perhaps even individual atoms. It would even be possible to use direct chemical imaging, instead of relying on fluorescent labels. This one application, which may well be attainable with the technology the authors used in their demonstration, should be enough for anyone to get excited about. “
Hey, any improvements to imaging technology are awesome in my books!
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