Talk:Invisibility

Consider these two bullet points:

• [A] A recent breakthrough (2006) at Imperial College London has shown that invisibility is possible by using specifically patterened crystals made up of nanoscale boxes that hold electrons. When light hits these crystals, it becomes entangled within the boxes, causing the object to become transparent.^[3]

• [B] Although it has been shown that making opaque objects perfectly invisible ("non-scattering scatterers") is impossible,^[4][5] 2006 theoretical work predicts that the imperfections need not be serious, and metamaterials may make real-life "cloaking devices" practical.^[6][7] The technique is suspected to be applied to radio waves within five years, and eventually visible light is a possibility.^[8]

Do these refer to the same research or not? They're both from 2006, and they both involve people from Imperial College London. I think the first is simply a hyped-up pop-sci version of the second, but I can't be sure because http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/exhibit.asp?tip=1&id=4659 doesn't cite any papers. —Keenan Pepper 01:17, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

They are not the same researcher(s), and they seem to be describing different phenomena. • Bullet point [A] summarizes The Royal Society web article "Invisibility at the flick of a switch", (undated despite the WP reference), which is signed by Profs. Frogley and Phillips of Imperial College, plus Profs. Dynes, Beck, and Faist of U's elsewhere. • Bullet point [B] is an amalgam of four research conclusions from Nachman, et al, 1988; Wolf, et al, 1993; Pendry, et al, 2006; and Leonhardt, et al, 2006. Cho appears to be a popular science abstract writer citing Pendry, et al, 2006, and Leonhardt, et al, 2006. Of the four original research citations, only J. B. Pendry is with Imperial College London, and Pendry's coauthors are at Duke U. of North Carolina.

Making no judgements about the scientists or the value of their underlying science, the "Invisibility at the flick of a switch" article is nearly incomprehensible as popular science writing. No invisibility switch or any kind of switching is ever mentioned. As educated readers are likely to understood it, "entangled" light boxes sounds like a nano hall of mirrors. If the light never exited, it would presumably have the same effect of blackness as absorption. The interaction of light with normal "wave patterns of the electrons" was not in texts that I've casually read, so the interaction of light with canceled electron waves remains unexplained to me by the contrast and compare method. • Worse yet, the article illogically segues to the "fundamental physical effect creating the transparency" as a data storage application that potentially could stop and store light — yet another equivalent to absorption blackness. • IMHO, bullet point [A] should be either deleted along with its poorly sourced reference, or rewritten to reflect ambiguity about an interesting concept in a new field — with its numbered source reference to include a popsci caution. Milo 05:23, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I agree with that. Also, I think I found the real paper on which the Royal Society article is based: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1561070 I'm trying to wade through it, but I have a feeling I need a few more years of physics courses just to understand the basics... —Keenan Pepper 06:54, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Someone has tagged the "Examples in fiction" section as needing cleanup, and rightly so. We cannot include every movie and video game that features invisibility, even though everyone sure wants to highlight their favorite movie/game and add it. The list would become (and in my opinion already is) ridiculously long. (And it's still missing NetHack!) I'm tempted to remove the whole list with just some brief section on how often the invisibility theme appears in fiction, listing few selected examples, such as The Invisible Man. What other examples do you think should be included and what should be left out? --ZeroOne 11:28, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Keep Ring of Gyges, The Invisible Man, and maybe a few others, but ditch the rest. If too many people whine, we can make a separate article Invisibility in fiction or whatever. —Keenan Pepper 02:38, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I appeal to save this mythic fiction list by spawning a standard list article, "List of Invisibility Examples in Fiction". A list article is Wikipedia guide approved for just this situation. Under that heading the present 38 or so will not be overlong, and fascinated list readers can peruse and continue adding their favorites to it without its bulk annoying the main article readers. In the main article you could draw up a list of firsts in invisibility fiction: first ancient myth, first printed book, first movie, etc., then link to the complete list of examples article. Firsts are brief and don't provoke much debate. • Why spawn an invisibility fiction list article? It's popular with readers as well as an academically important myth. Human fascination with the fictional desire for invisibility could be rooted in evolutionary biology traceable to our primitive sea ancestors. To be invisible (enough), is to not be eaten and so continue reproducing in the usual pleasant way. :) Invisibility is a fiction of mythic status even greater than wealth devices like the Touch of Gold — in comic books there is Invisible Woman, but no Midas Man. Milo 04:17, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

List of invisibility examples in fiction does sound like a good solution. --ZeroOne 23:03, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

H.G. Wells' story is notable for its impact on science fiction and popular culture, and a tally of how many times it has been adapted to film is notable in connection. However, beyond that, a list is necessary. Star Trek has had several stories about personal cloaking devices or invisibility through other methods, and brought "cloaking device" into popular parlance. It too would be notable, and might merit a link to a section in the Star Trek articles that mentions invisibility.

I consider Quake notable, because in multiplayer mode, a player using the Ring of Shadows artifact is invisible except for his eyeballs. The eyeballs are red on the backside. This is an unusual depiction of invisibility; I have not seen it done elsewhere. --205.201.141.146 19:23, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

"According to the laws of physics as presently understood, an invisible person would necessarily be blind, no matter how their invisibility were achieved. In order to see light, it must be absorbed by the retina, but in order for a person to be invisible, the body must not absorb light. In fact, according to the no cloning theorem of quantum mechanics, they could not even make a copy of the photons so they could see one copy and allow the other copy to pass through or around them."

But of course you can make a copy of the photons if you don't care about their quantum state. You'll achieve a great deal of invisibility if you just clone them any old way because the human eye is not all that polarization sensitive. Of course the no cloning theorem says that the person can be detected by some polarization tricks then, but without of those devices... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dheerav2 (talk • contribs) 13:40, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

"On the other hand, a practical invisibility method need not allow light of all frequencies to pass all the time, so there may be ways around this limitation."

If we did allow, say, ultraviolet light through, could we have a computer interpret the colors it sees in ultraviolet, into the colors seen in visible light? Could ultraviolet light pass through the invisibility cloak designed by Imperial College London? The website for the invisibility cloak is... http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_20-10-2006-8-24-5?newsid=2812 09:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

How do people feel about adding something to do with fictional pseudo-invisibility effects such as the Somebody Else's Problem field and the idea that Terry Prachett's Death cannot be seen by most people since they don't want to. Cmdr Adeon 19:06, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Is there any way to become invisible?

Not yet, although there are new technologies that are approaching it. For example:

• http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2006/10/cloakdemo.html - Scientists make an "invisibility cloak" that affects radio waves
• http://theblogjoint.com/2006/07/03/invisibility-cloaks-video/ and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/2777111.stm - Japanese scientists create a form of Optical Camoflogue.

So we're not at true invisibility yet, but these are inventions that are showing it might be at least possible eventually. In addition, some of these inventions have interesting real life applications -- for example, making an invisible "window" inside a cement wall, allowing people to look outside without compromising security or (in the case of something like a CA Room) environmental settings, or creating an "invisibility cloak" that reflects radiation. KiTA (talk) 17:34, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, a cloak, but it is now 3-D unlike before, just 2-D. So, I added this as sub-section instead of just a paragraph. It is the very first discovery.--Florentino floro (talk) 09:46, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I have heard from a friend of mine who read a physics article on invisibility that a material (I guess it would be more of a metamaterial) exists that greatly slows light, so you would see it, but not where it really is. I haven't had the chance to read the article, and even tough I hope to find it soon, I guess if anyone knew more about this, would be interesting to mention it here, altough it might not be considered to be actual invisibility since you would see the object eventually (depending on the degree of "lag" the slowing of light would cause, which I ignore). Also, I guess when the object became illuminated, it would take a while for it to appear, since light reflecting from it would take longer to reach the eye than the rest of the light reflecting from other objects. So, if anyone has true knowledge of this, it would be nice to see it posted on wikipedia. Uberflaven (talk) 15:45, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

This wiki is a joke. The german language Invisibility wiki is packed with science and interesting things... but this English language one is silly and short and has more info about fictional nonsense and magic and "sight while invisible", which is just mental masturbation. It might as well be talking about who would win in a fight, Superman or Mighty Mouse. "In fact theoretically the cloaking system could be manufactured to completely bend all visible light around it leaving him 100% invisible to species that only perceive visible light. However, this also may be the result of the species keeping a fair advantage, as Predators are known to be honorable warriors." Come on... is this for real? This belongs in a Predator fan site, not on wikipedia. We need to just translate the German language Invisibility wiki and use that. Simple. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.16.148.73 (talk) 20:22, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

should the article do that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.75.210.110 (talk) 06:06, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

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Research Dr. Martha Gurban. Her work with creating the invisibility phenomenon was amazing. Urqueenrae (talk) 10:23, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect 🫥 and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 June 11#🫥 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:31, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

In a hypothetical scenario where 100% of light passes through an individual, would it still be possible for them to see? I understand this might be more suitable for Reddit, but I wanted to ask those who could provide the most realistic answer. Luminira the golden path (talk) 20:38, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Nope, if it passes through you, nothing will be able to intercept it. It will be as if nothing existed, meaning light will not exist to you, and, as such, you would be blind. – LuniZunie_(talk) 20:39, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

@LuniZunie thank you for your answer l am very happy to finally get my answer Luminira the golden path (talk) 11:04, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Of course =) – LuniZunie_(talk) 15:33, 8 March 2026 (UTC)