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.

Comments

Well, Hell

[SpyceQube]

This just made my Slim Goodbody suit totally obsolete.

Developed for the team

[griffjon]

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.

This could be a great mugger deterent

[bob_jordan]

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.

Sounds cool, but not too usefule

[tylerh]

This seems to be of limited use.

Thus far, the transparency extends only a couple of millimeters deep...transparent human skin would allow optical devices to penetrate further and illuminate tissue properties... "It's really a simple idea," said Welch. "To make it useful will be the more difficult task."

So, if want you want to see is in first 3 millimeters of skin, this might help. But it seems a really invasive procedure (saturating with Glycerol) for such a small benefit.

Am I the ONLY one?

[Grimster]

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.

Fabulous Business Future

[tylerh]

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)

Just like all new technology...

[Lord Kano]

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

And when this goes mainstream....

[TBHiX]

...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:

• Can you imagine what the body-art and tattoo people would be able to do with this stuff? Particularly in light of the fact that it is non-permanent? Raves featuring people displaying "invisible motifs" suddenly come to mind. Or how about a "floating tattoo", regular ink on invisible skin?
• Akin to the above, how about courier intelligence? A message could be tattooed in flesh tones on someone. It's entirely undetectable under normal circumstances, but fade the flesh and... (does this sort of low-tech communication still have a place in today's espionage?)

Just a couple of thoughts.

-TBHiX-

Re:And when this goes mainstream....

[ackthpt]

Can you imagine what the body-art and tattoo people would be able to do with this stuff? Particularly in light of the fact that it is non-permanent? Raves featuring people displaying "invisible motifs" suddenly come to mind. Or how about a "floating tattoo", regular ink on invisible skin?

Because it'd probably be reckless without adequate testing
Because it'd be likely to cause all kinds of nasty infections
Because it could possibly result in sunburn in usual internal locations
Mostly for all of these reasons and more it's gonna be a hit and everyone will be doing it!

Our skin is actually a big bag that God gave us to keep all of our stuff in.

Vote Naked 2000

This is not a new discovery

[Riplakish]

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.

wonders of science

[konstant]

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!

Implications for cryonics

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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.

Simple technology

[skoda]

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.
-----
http://movies.shoutingman.com

Re:Simple technology

[scott@b]

Glycerol's refractive index is 1.47 or so, plain water or even salt water is 1.3X - however all the organics making up celluar material are higher. Glycerol has been used for a long time for tissue preparation for microscope viewing, making the tissue more transparent.

Note that glycerol (glycerin) is relatively non-toxic (it's been used in food for decades) and fairly quickly metabolised by the body (the effect is short-lived, provided you're alive).

Re:10 mm

[jbarnett]

Apple is suing for this transparent design, they claim it infinriges on there iMac model.

You mean a TRANSPARENT person would be blind

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

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?
--

Re:You mean a TRANSPARENT person would be blind

[Zagadka]

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?

Two problems: First, you'll need to make the lenses an cornea non-invisible (ie: maintain the refractive index they currently have) or you won't be able to focus. Second, you'll need to have significantly more of your eye be opaque, or you'll go blind from all of the stray light. (plus, you wouldn't be able to see clearly, since far more light would be hitting your retinas from the sides and back, than through the lens) An added disadvantage is that with invisible eyelids and hands, it'll be somewhat difficult to block your eyes from bright lights.

Re:Myth dispelled

[ackthpt]

We are more than 6 degrees away from Kevin Bacon.

Centigrade or Fahrenheit?


Vote Naked 2000

What about dermatoligists?

[ackthpt]

Let's take a look at that mole, shall we?

Oh, wait, that's a baby alien... cool.

Vote Naked 2000

It's a plot ...

[mustermark]

... 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.

Finally!

[KFury]

"Your epidermis is showing!"

"No it's not!!!"

Kevin Fox

Re:Invisability

[Jbrecken]

What other usages (apart from being able to see what you had for dinner) are there?

Use it on a pregnant woman, and you wouldn't need ultrasound to watch the fetus, who would have the side benefit of getting a womb with a view.

Re:Other ways to become transparent

[skoda]

While it sides like a great idea, I think it would be extremely difficult to implement:

1) How to arrange the fibers to cover the body? You need to capture any light incident light with a certain position and angle and route it to where it would propagate had there not been a body in the way.

2) There would likely be significant signal loss problems. High efficient fiber coupling, such as used for telecom requires good optics and precision positioning. This is because
2a) A small portion of light incident on the front glass surface is reflected away (think glare on a monitor screen) so you want make efforts to reduce that.
2b) Fibers have a maximum input angle for incident light, above which the light is lost during propagation through the fiber. This angle is ballpark 30.
2c) Finally, ray orientation will be lost during propagation through the fiber. Thus, output direction != input direction. That may be a problem.
2d) Transmission properties are wavelength dependent. Not a huge deal, but another minor factor.

3) Finally, optical fiber bundles used for imaging, such as in endoscopes, are known for their mediocre image quality. Fibers are not generally a good tool for analog image transmission.

Ok, class over :)

-----
http://movies.shoutingman.com