Several clothing manufacturers have experimented with acloak ofinvisibility you can wear around, but now researchers thinkthey can use this technology for something much moreimportant: making warplanes and spacecraft invisible. Thetrick: Light scattering. We can see objects becauselight bounces off them, but if this scattering of lightcould be prevented (and if the objects didn’t absorb anylight), they would be invisible.

Philip Ball writes in nature.com that the technology worksby reflecting light, so the viewer cannot see the actualobject but sees what is behind it instead. Now researchers Andrea Al and Nader Engheta have invented a shield thatreduces the visibility of an object from all viewing angles.The light source matters too: an object that can be made tobe invisible in red light, may not be invisible in daylight.The surface of each object would have to be individuallyconstructed in order to hide the object from sight.

Thunderbirds–While they’re not invisible, only some people have seen them, andWhitley is one of them! Whitley tells the story of his childhoodcontacts in The Secret School andsubscribers cannow listen to this audio tape for no extra charge, and youcan download it to an MP3 disc for listening in your car!

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