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Article: Out of sight: physicists get serious about invisibility shields.
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- July 15, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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First, a disclaimer: Invisibility cloaks like Harry Potter are nowhere near becoming reality. Nor has anyone unearthed proof that the infamous Philadelphia experiment--in which U.S. Navy scientists in 1943 supposedly made a destroyer and its crew vanish--really took place. Stygian crystals, said to confer invisibility in Star Wars films and books, remain figments of writers' imaginations. And not one invisibility shield yet exists, not even a mouse-size one, as best anyone can tell.
The reality is this: Scientists have recently been doing some deep thinking about how light and matter interact. As a result, even some practical-minded physicists and engineers have ...