Motherboard

For decades people have been clamoring for science to find a cure for cancer. But really, what’s so great about saving a bunch of sick people? They’re weak. In fact, I bet they’ll only get sick again. Science needs to turn its attention toward advancements that will make life better for the healthy among us. The robust and virile members of the human race deserve improved capabilities. Speaking of capes, I can’t believe it’s 2010 and still no one’s got a decent invisibility cloak on the market! Until very recently, the work done in this field has yielded limited results.

Back in 2006 a team at Duke University built an invisibility cloak that almost got hyped to death. Headlines everywhere praised their device, promising a new age of ubiquitous magical technologies. Turns out the Duke cloak was only invisible to microwave detectors, and only at a specific frequency mircowave frequency, and only worked in two dimensions. So, basically, it was a boring science thing no one cared about. The damage had been done, however, and nerds everywhere embraced the opportunity to flood youtube with hoax videos, pretending to showcase a ‘real-life invisibility cloak’. Educated viewers were able to easily separated this brazen green-screenery from the real deal, knowing well that even for the most incredible technologies scientists, seem incapable of making demo videos even remotely exciting.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18359-how-to-make-a-liquid-invisibility-cloak.html The fluid proposed by Ji-Ping Huang of Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and colleagues, contains magnetite balls 10 nanometres in diameter, coated with a 5-nanometre-thick layer of silver, possibly with polymer chains attached to keep them from clumping.