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The Invisible Man? Kinda.
A lot of people have written in regarding the announcement from scientists at the University of Texas @ Austin discovering "invisibilty". Well, sort of. What it does do is make small areas of skin (humans have not been tested) transparent for a short amount of time. By transparent, I mean 2 mm of transparency - not exactly enough to make me Inside Out Boy. Yet.
"Oh darling you have such lovely kidneys"
"Whoa".
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
"Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi"
when I went to UT Austin I felt pretty damn invisible, I thought it was just in the water there ... ;)
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
By transparent, I mean 10 mm of transparency - not exactly enough to make me Inside Out Boy. Yet.
10 mm = 1 cm. That's enough to see blood vessels, bones (in many places), and all sorts of other fun stuff that lies beneath the skin. You won't be IOB yet, but you'll have a fun time grossing other people out.
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I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Put an LCD under the transparent skin in your hand. Put a Linux system in your stomach. Now you're a walking open-source machine!
Visit the
Okay, let's just forget about the ability to stand invisable next to a naked hot-grit covered Natalie Portman and think what other usages this technology has.
Yeah, there's the medical one (which is covered in the article) allowing doctors to see 'below the skin', but there is also the possible military usage. Perfect it to get somebody totally invisable and you've got a damn good killing machine... What other usages (apart from being able to see what you had for dinner) are there?
Richy C.
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UT's been working on this technology for years to enhance the performance of the UT football team so we can rule college football even more than we already do. (everything at UT revolves around football, naturally)
It's being secretly tested on pigskin, as well.
Hook 'em.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
if you could somehow do it to order.
Mugger jumps out and demands money, you say something scary in Latin, then say "Your soul is mine mortal", add a cackly laugh, give your self a quick injection and your skin turns transparent.
You wouldn't get the aformentioned mugger out of a church with crowbars.
Bob.
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
see ya!
Who wants to see PICTURES and not just a couple, of this in ACTION?
This sounds neat as hell but without pictures it just lacks something.
--- www.f-theocean.com
This would be a great gag to put in a suntan lotion tube.
"Hey, Jenny McCarthy, I see you like the model B45XL, also."
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I knew it was only a matter of time before scientific research yielded the answer...
We are more than 6 degrees away from Kevin Bacon.
until it lets me look at naked women in the shower. :-)
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Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk
We might be tricked once, but this time we all know that this just another lie! Most likely just some over-zealous PR guy at the university hyped up the release. Two weeks from now Slashback will report that Professor Welch was actually performing experiments with sunless tanning products on rat skin.
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Of course such serums exists! And they are at a much more advanced state than that! I saw it in a documentary called Hollow Man or something like that... seems like it also makes you undestructible even if you get burned, electrocuted, hammered with a crowbar and lots of other things!
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
Thus far, the transparency extends only a couple of millimeters deep, but that's at least five times and as much as 20 times deeper into the body than doctors can currently see with optical devices such as lasers. Doctors can now see only about a tenth of a millimeter deep with light.
I know this has been discussed many times before, but do they even read the articles they post? It's just a couple millimeters, not 10. Where the hell did 10 millimeters come from anyways? Slashdot has been pretty bad on getting the facts right recently. I expect better that this.
Tatoo Removal
20 years from, all these inked Gen Y'ers are going to pay big bucks to make their tattos go away, and these guys are going to rake it in 8)
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
So now all we have to do is find a way to make bones tranparent and all the internal organs transparent and then we'll be able to make people invisible ;)
Ahh well we can only imagine!
this is first going to be used by the adult entertainment industry.
Remember the first DVDs you saw on display at your local computer show? I'd bet that they were all pornos.
This is going to be used to make a new level of disgustingly graphic porno.
"New from 'Wet Spot' entertainment a new exclusive, 'Inside Ron Jeremy's ballsack", it's sure to educate while it entertains"
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
...as it certainly must, because it doesn't sound as if it requires much in the way of expensive equipment or specialized expertise, then I can see some interesting developments:
Just a couple of thoughts.
-TBHiX-
"Well, Bob. It looks like we won't need to make your skin invisible to check in on that tumor anymore. The patch above the area in question appears to have fallen off this morning."
Sandidge
$ cat glycerol > /dev/mouse
So that's what Joanie's been crying about all morning, chasing her tail, trying to get into the cupboards....
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
It could revolutionize the movie making industry as well. Think of the money they can save on expensive makeup for some characters as well as some of those CGI effects like you see in Hollowman....
-- A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake without ketchup and mustard
There is a product that does about the same thing that has been around for a long time. Actually after you apply it to something, the longer you leave it on the more invisible the object gets. I don't know the trade name for it, but the scientific name is H2SO4.
Thank god for this. With transparent skin I will no longer need to perform surgery upon myself with my kitchen knives to locate and extract the implants and baby aliens implanted in me on my last abduction to the mothership. If this advances to transparency of bone structure, then even exploratory work in my head with a drill may become unecessary!
Perhaps the aliens will no longer resort to anal probes quite so often now that they can see what they need from the outside. You would not even want to see one of their "medical devices". Ouch, and I mean OUCH! Sometimes I think there might be something wrong with those aliens IN THE HEAD!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Cryonic suspension includes reducing freezing damage by injecting large amounts of ice-crystal inhibiting chemicals. (Think "antifreeze".) Glycerol is one that is popular.
But explicit cryonic research tends to be done on a shoestring - because it isn't all that popular, and many of the suspendees need to put the resources they allocated for it into funding the suspension.
So (like most technologies) cryonics tries to get as much of a boost as it can from research done for other purposes.
This skin-transparency research has obvious medical applications, and the researchers are already talking about testing the toxicity of glycerol. This will no doubt lead to a lot of research into that, and a search for other, less toxic, chemicals that can infiltrate cells and smooth the refractive index to increase transparency.
Some of these are likely to be good candidates for cryonic preservatve agents, and thus this research should lead lower-damage preservatives, both for tissue banks and for the cryonic life-extension movement.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
At first, I said, "Whoa!" in my best Keanu Reeves voice. After reading the article, it seemed like a rather simple technique.
I think they are just doing index matching. Glycerol has an index of refraction close to that of water. Since cells are mostly water, filling all the inter-celluar areas with something of similar index will allow rudimentary index matching to be accomplished. With the index of refraction much closer throughout the volume, scattering will be much reduced, allowing better light propagation, and consequently, better imaging results.
This process is commonly used to test moderately polished glass optics, by immersing them in an oil of equivalent index. Since it's usually bad form to inject living things with mineral oils, a different substance was needed: hence glycerol.
To observe the effect:
- Take a clear piece of hard plastic
- Rough one or both surfaces (sandpaper is good)
- It should now be translucent or even opaque depending on how much you damaged the surface.
- Immerse in water. You should be able to see through it much better.
Anyhow - that's my guess on the basics of this technique.
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http://movies.shoutingman.com
ShoutingMan.com
You know you're a geek when you read this story and the first thing that pops into your head is "Unreal Tournament Football? Where can I get the mod for that?"
OK, I'll crawl back into my little hole now.
For more information, click here.
I vote this one "overrated", "offtopic", and "stupid."
I mean X-ray's of course. This sounds like a good way for surgens to operate on area's with less need of X-rays first which could give the doc's just enough extra time to save a life or two. Could also be good for other medical inspections, rather then take a biopsy of you stomache, lets inject it with this and peer right into it and have a look-see. "ahh, had the tuna plate huh"
Trying to be different, just like everyone else.
So now I can go out without even my birthday suit showing?
This will bring a whole new realm of weirdness to your average nudist colony.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
...to the phrse "clear skin" (that's funny! gimme 2 points!!)
What we really need is a substance that can make 10mm of clothing invisible for short periods of time.
Wake me up when they invent prismic sheilding.
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Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
If you are transparent, light passes through you with no effect. If you are invisible people just can't see you. All transparent people are invisible, but not all invisible people are transparent. For instance, if I don my camo-wear and hid under some leaves I'm (theoretically) invisible. But I'm not transparent.
How does this apply in this case? One example: Make my entire body except my retinas transparent. Who's going to notice a couple of dime-sized disks floating in the air, especially if the background is patterned?
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Linux MAPI Server!
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Surely?!
Jelly man!
Ewwww....
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Most people can't!
Damn you Slashdot! Damn you Slashdot!
Let's take a look at that mole, shall we?
Oh, wait, that's a baby alien... cool.
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Actually, your comparison is more apt than you might think.
Few people know this, but the Crusades were actually tested on animals before being used on people. There test runs involved waging war against an army of mice holed-up in a mouse-size walled city. They found they could defeat the mice (tied to full-size sabres, for the sake of realism) with minimal fatalities, and thus gave the go-ahead for the move to the real Crusades. Though the actual war-waging didn't go as easily as it had in the tests, they found that the "rape and pillage" portion of the Crusade worked much better than it had with the mice.
The enemies of Democracy are
... by the administration here to eliminate overcrowding. If you can't see students, you don't have to worry about them. I hear they're going to build invisible dorms. We already have invisible parking lots.
Shhh, don't tell anyone.
It took 44 other replies along the lines of "I can't wait to be invisible" before you posted the logical, scientific analysis of what they are doing. Moderators, do your duty.
I had a similar thought when I saw this. They've been experimenting with glycerol and some additives to get the refractive index to match the intercellular R.I. Then they can see subcutaneous features with a non-invasive look. Just another tool in the doctors kit.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
work on a spray that makes clothing invisible? I don't want to have to go and work at the airport or walk around with a special video camera in order to be able to see people naked.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
The researchers later announced that their invisibility system causes tv execs to go insane and produce crappy IM sequels
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Okay, admit it, I'm betting that a lot of people (most non-Texans I'm sure) read "UT Scientists" and thought to themselves "Unreal Tournament has scientists? This game RULES!" ...okay, i'm an idiot, go raiders...
It's ignorance itself to think you know all the answers. -Miles Comer
Is this what kids are going to be doing in 10 years instead of tattoos and peircings ?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Then install an LED emitter detector pair on opposite sides of your dick coupled to a CO2 canister on a small sized deflated doughnut shaped baloon. Bang away! Then when the cum interrupts the LED beam, the CO2 canister rapidly inflites the baloon and quickly forces you to "pull out" by blasting you off your partner!
Of whom so clear
The organs appear
With illuminated Glow
As intimate -- as 10 millimeters
Of glycerine-transparent toe.
Am I the only one who thinks that "pricking holes" in my skin and then smearing some stuff on it sounds worse than an injection?
"Your epidermis is showing!"
"No it's not!!!"
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
How we can use it:
Replace x-ray machines. The doctor can see right through my body, why would I want to get bombarded by x-rays.
Pimple remover.
Oh and thanks for Daniel Boone too.
It's ignorance itself to think you know all the answers. -Miles Comer
Reminds me of a (brief) part in Thomas Pynchon's epic WWII novel Gravity's Rainbow where a filmmaker experiments with Emulsion J filmstock. The fictional filmstock, developed for IG Farben by enigmatic scientist-of-all-trades Laszlo Jamf, allows for the skin to appear transparent. Fake science influencing art influencing real science!!! I love it!
Fight Spammers!
Using a laser that vaporizes anything visible it touches, you should be able to remove tattoos much more completely than you can can now.
I like the floating tattoo idea also, it would be like a transparent GIF.
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This is translucency, not invisibility. It might win the high school science fair, but it's not worthy of an announcement on Slashdot, IMO. I wonder if this is just spoofing the press.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
a few thousand years from now. It's called an SEP (Somebody Else's Problem). Every BistroMatic has one.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Why don't they make clothing out of fiber-optic cables? The cables would run around the body with small signal loss. Light would go in one side and out the other, making the wearer fairly transparent. I've heard this from other sources, I can't say I thought it up.
I'd rather be able to take a shirt off than be stuck with transparent skin.
"Uhh...so is this going to wear off?"
I wanna see through clothes, not through skin! What's the use of this stuff? Wasted technology I tell you, we need more pr0n tools like that "feeling" mouse! just kiddin...
-=MeMpHiStO=-It is a common myth that if you make something pass light cleanly that you wind up with something invisible. If that were the case, then glass and plastic would be really tough to find when you set it on a table, and diamonds would be considerably less pretty. You also have to adjust the defraction index of the substance to equal that of air.
One of the ways to demonstrate this is to submerse diamonds in water. Diamonds and water have the same defraction index, so the diamonds literally vanish. You can use this trick on an engagement ring to tell a real diamond from a cubic zirconia or cut glass.
Mythological Beast
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
I hope this doesn't mean someone could use this to see how many chicken mcnuggets I just had for lunch...
I've been wondering about other potential agents could be used instead of or together with glycerol to possibly improve the effect. DMSO is one possibility. Nontoxic, diffuses through tissues easily, and has an index of refraction of 1.477. Biologically inert sugars such as trehalose might also be added to the mix.
BTW, all of these agents also happen to be cryoprotectants.
I want this so that I can inject it into my cat, then stick the cat in bed with my mother-in-law when she "drops by" for her two-week visits. Perhaps if she thinks my house is haunted by a cat she'll stay the hell away.
I'll stick to using a rocket launcher!
UT forever!
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
The method is to inject glycerin under the skin, and it wears off in 20 minutes or so. I'm afraid your sister would have to get 2 jabs, one random, for this to work.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Are you thinking ot Ethelyne Glycol?
Nope. That's for cars, and it's neurotoxic. Preserving the brain is the most important part of Cryonic suspension. Indeed, most suspendees are head-only, hoping for a replacement body or a fully-regrown body with brain downloaded with data extracted from the old brain.
Glycerol is one of the chemicals that has been used for tissue. (I don't know if it's part of the current protocol, or of the one that they've used to freeze rat hearts to liquid nitrogen temperatures and get them to beat when rewarmed.)
See the back issues of Cryonics magazine to track the technology.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This was an experiment in Nazi Germany, it was one of those things they did to captured Jews for fun. Supposedly it worked pretty well, but the people died of infection pretty quickly. It might be able to work today, though.
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Let's steal a gallon of this, sneak onto Kevin Bacon's estate, and then inject him with it. Him or Rodney Dangerfield, though I don't think Rodney would notice the difference.
Andrew Borntreger
Andrew Borntreger
Champion of cinematic disasters
Of course, if you were invisible, you could not see anything as the light passes through your eyeballs as well, without making contact with the receptors. If you did want to see, you would have to look like a pair of floating retinas and lenses. :)
we'll all be one degree closer to Kevin Bacon?
"It's all right, it's ok. There's something to live for" - Uncle Bill
It'll probably cause cancer :P
I think Hemos changed his original article.
I remember it said 10mm, but now it says 1/10mm. Shame, Hemos.
Neither is true. The article says "a couple millimeters".
-k
I once had a girl-friend like that. Her skin was so white she looked like one of those plastic, transparent, circulatory system lab models. I personally know several nerds who, after spending this last winter transfixed before their active screens, looked like the limp milky fish you see laying on the ice in your local market. Their skin looked more like wet roadmap than real flesh, their arteries like interstate highways. Just one question: does this mean that you could get a sun-tan from the inside out?
"Oblivion is just a click away." -Aazz
Well I'm pretty sure that the blurb on slashdot did say 10mm before somebody changed it. I offer into evidence this post from earlier in the comments.
But this "fix" is wrong too. As you can see from my original quote of the article, this new technique allow for a couple millimeters of transparency. 1/10mm is what doctors can currently do.
Hey Mörkö, come here! Mörkööö!! (my pet rat) Let's try this stuff on your tail...
Wow, INVISIBLE RAT!
No, I'm not joking, of course I tried it. It's quite safe stuff, sometimes used to warm bodyparts. It's even added in some foods.
Fortunately, the rat stayed mostly visible. Otherwise I would be now chasing an invisible rat desperately around my apartment. Radar rat race... pip pip pip pipipi pip pip pip, pip pip pip pipipi pip pip pip, pip pip pip pip piiii...
Glycerol changes the degree of diffusion by absorbing water: It shrinks the tissue and modifies the way light is scattered.
It shrinks the damn tissue! Obviously if this is how it works, any prolonged use of it without proper medical attention could be very harmful. I don't see this particular technology with glycerol going too much further. Maybe some other chemical but it's going to have to work in a whole new way.
I say just rub some grease on anything. And if you can see through it, eat it!
Read the Invisible Man by HG Wells. Not only is it a good book but the "science" behind the invisible man in the book is very similar to what is detailed in this article as well as making up solutions to other problems that have to be solved to make a person invisible.
Other replys in this thread suggest this as a method of tattoo removal. One of the problems with making something invisible is pigment, such as what is used to make tattoos. To "remove" a tattoo this process would not help at all. Pigment also exists in your hair, skin, eyes, and blood. To achieve invisibility those pigments would have to be removed (ouch) or modified.
Again if invisibility intrigues you read The Invisible Man by HG Wells (Hollow Man looks stupid)
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
Thanks to the response on my comments above, I'm up to the big 21 on the karma scale. I now have enough karma to drink on Slashdot, to believe that my poll votes count for something, and to do anything I want with a goat anywhere in the United States. ;)
(Sorry for the OT posting. It's been a long day, and I need my little celebration. ;P)
-TBHiX-
See, "epidermis" means your hair -- so technically it's true. That's what makes it so funny.
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begin 644
It's not a big deal, but it might be a way to make some dermatology treatments, like laser hair removal, work on more people. Laser hair removal requires that the skin be much lighter than the hair, so it doesn't work on fair-skinned blondes or dark-skinned people. This might help.
Its disheartening to see that americans are just catching up. The Klingons have had this technology for years!
Geoff
For the non-Europeans here:
FKK= Frei Korper Kulture, literally, "Free Body Culture," and is the German term for the movement behind the (quite large) number of public parks, lakes, etc., which allow, encourage or tolerate what Americans call "nudism." (In practice, the Germans make a whole less of a big deal about the whole thing -- you do to the lake, you take your clothes off, you go swimming...).
I'm not sure this makes the above comment funny, but it sure helps.
Oh.....I see.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I really hate getting this deep into an OT discussion, BUT...
The things you bring up are nice, cute and whatnot. However, the University of Tennessee began in 1794. When was that college in Austin formed? If it was before UT then it would be UMexico, wouldn't it?
Why must UM insist on using orange and white? Those are the UT Knoxville colors, that were around ages before Texas was emancipated from Mexico, with the strong assistance from some prominant Tennesseans.
There is no denying that the University of Mexico, Austin has had some stellar academic achievements, but the initials UT were in use about a century before your 2nd largest state in the union was even thought of.
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Hey moderator, did you even look at the link before marking this as troll?
Well, guess what, it really is Bruce Perens saying that the story is dumb. A bit like you.
Please: Explain the sign the cat is holding to a non-american..
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$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
Well, actually his name is Jack Schitt! Jack is the only son of Awe Schitt. Awe Schitt, the fertilizer magnate, married Oh Schitt, the owner of Knee-Deep Schitt, Inc. In turn, Jack Schitt married Noe Schitt, and the deeply religious couple produced 6 children: Holie Schitt, the twins Deep Schitt and Dip Schitt, Fulla Schitt, Giva Schitt, and Bull Schitt. Against his parents' objections, Deep Schitt married Dumb Schitt, a high school dropout. Dip Schitt married Loada Schitt, and they produced a timid son, Chicken Schitt. Fulla Schitt and Giva Schitt were inseparable throughout childhood, and consequently married the Happens brothers in a dual ceremony. The Schitt-Happens children are Dawg Schitt, Byrd Schitt, and Hoarse Schitt. Bull Schitt, the prodigal son, left home to tour the world. He recently returned home with his new bride, Pisa Schitt. After being married for 15 years, Jack and Noe divorced. Noe later married Mr. Sherlock, and because her kids were living with them, she wanted to keep her previous name. She was known as Noe Schitt-Sherlock. Well, thats about as much as I can tell you about Jack. So don't YOU go tellin' ME that I don't now Jack Schitt! ;-)
WHATEVERRR!!! DON'T EVEN GO THERE! Talk to the HAND!
We all are invisible in some band of the spectrum.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
We should all bend over and kiss our butts goodbye.