One of the most popular fictional technology in video games from the past 15 years have
been invisibility cloaks.
But is a cloaking device something humans could actually make and more importantly,
would physics allow it?
Without light, matter is invisible.
You can’t technically see any object that doesn’t emit or reflect photos.
This means that nearly everything you see in your day to day life is merely the light
that has bounced off an object and into your eye, not the actual object.
Therefor, to go invisible, you must either absorb all the photons from reflecting back,
generate your own photons to trick the viewer, or bend photons around your body so they never
actually even bounce off.
So absorbing photos is not necessarily as difficult as it sounds.
The problem is that when an object absorbs photos, light is not bounced back to the viewer.
They simply see a black silhouette of you.
At night or in space this might not actually be an issues, in fact nearly all special forces
wear black to hide in the dark.
It’s down side is when the user is present in daylight and as photons are absorbed by
the cloth, it’s converted into heat energy so if any thermal vision was used, you’d
actually be even easier to spot.
Faking out the eye by generating a different light pattern is precisely how modern day
cloaking devices work.
Small cameras and sensors stream video from one side of the cloth.
Materials with favorable properties are generally not very reflective and not unnaturally bright.
As seen in this video, the military has already shown a lot of interest in the technology
to help special forces get into an area or stranded soldiers out of an area.
In urban and natural areas where the background is a random static pattern such as grass,
leaves, stones, or rubble the device works near flawlessly.
When the user is near recognizable geometries, the technology seems to fall apart.
Bending light around an object seems to be the most authentic method of cloaking.
In fact, black holes have such immense gravitational fields that light bends around it, making
far away stars that you shouldn’t be able to see, visible.
The image is very distorted and doesn't really look natural though.
Again, under random chaotic patterns, it can be quite useful.
The act of bending light in general has it’s practical limitations though.
Generating a gravity well deep enough to be successful is currently impossible.
With dark energy or dark matter, this limitation can be lifted, but until then it’s simply
not practical enough.
There’s no doubt that having invisibility and the shotgun is some of the most exciting
moments in gaming.
In fact, games are a perfect medium to examine fanciful technology and encounters.
They give you a looking glass into the world of the unknown and allow you to not only witness
these interactions, but you can also take part in them.
Anyways guys, if there was one place you could go or thing you could do while invisible,
what would it be?
Leave it in the comments down below and thanks for watching