Braille Illustration # 27

I read a very interesting tidbit from Wikipedias front page today:

"Did you know that metamaterials with a negative refractive index cause light to bend in unusual ways (pictured) and offer the possibility of making an object undetectable to incident radiation (that is, invisible)?"

Neat!

No surprise that scientists are researching this for possible use in military situations. But maybe in 50 years, people will be able to go to their local clothing store and buy invisibility suits. First, the suits would only be available to rich people. This would of course cause even more distrust of the absurdly wealthy in our nation. Who knows when a rich person is lurking around unseen in their invisibility suit? Tyrannic Bosses will be another center of even more distrust. These bosses would most likely buy these suits to spy on their employees. Eventually, the suits would be available for everyone. When this happens, heat sensing goggles will also become more popular. If you can see the invisible people around you, at least you will see their body heat through your heat sensing goggles. I think invisibility suits would make for a quite paranoid nation.

I think there could be some interesting experiments using the invisibility suit. The experiments would test humans extra senses: The sense the one is being followed, the sense that someone else is in a room with you, and the sense that one is being watched. In 1940's film noir movies, people often 'sense that they are being followed.' Its difficult to judge if they are really being followed or just paranoid. People say 'they sensed something was in the room with them' all the time to justify hauntings or ghosts. So, can people sense the presence of others? I don't known how many times I have tried to slyly people watch, only to have my efforts foiled by my watched person seeming to sense my intrusive stare. So, did they sense my eyes watching them? All these questions could be solved with the invisibility suit!