A group of researchers is actually perfecting a way to make a human being invisible -- it's nowhere near being ready for action, but it's a lot closer than you'd think our technology was capable of right now. The concept for its use is military, obviously, but let your imagination wander...

Whether its an embarrassing moment (like asking a not-pregnant woman when her baby's due), a sneaky moment (stealing someone's lunch out of the office fridge because you forgot yours) or a bashful moment (wearing your yucky sweats to the mall 'just for a minute,' then running into your ex), we've all wanted to simply disappear every once in a while. Heck, Southwest has built an entire ad campaign around it.

I'm not sure I can wrap my head around the technology being used by the researchers, but it's heavy-duty physics mixed with some biology and chemistry, and the science is getting closer to the cloaking devices seen in science fiction for almost a century -- most recently in Star Trek as a way to hide the Enterprise and in Harry Potter as one of the famed Deathly Hallows.

I know I've had a fair few moments when I've just wanted to just pull a sheet over my head and disappear for a few hours ... There was an incident in a parking lot just before a long road trip a few years back where I changed into a pair of PJs in the car only to find that I was in very plain view -- we're talking dashboard to dashboard -- of someone on a cell phone staring open-mouthed at me from another car. I crawled behind the driver's seat and hid on the floor until the car drove off, and have barely spoken of the moment since, such was the extent of my embarrassment.

Ah, what a way to start the week -- have any stories you want to share that involves a sudden need to disappear?

Labels: cloaking devices, invisibility

This entry was posted by Amber, on Monday, July 21, 2008. You can leave your response .