The Physics of Invisibility: A Story of Light and Deception

The ability is see is fundamental to our very existence. How true our perceptions really are depends upon many factors, and not least is our understanding of what light is and how it interacts with matter. It was said that the camera, the icon of light recording instruments, never lies, and in the day of the glass plate and celluloid roll-film this might well have been true. But in this modern era, with electronic cameras and computer software, it is often safe to assume that the camera always lies. The advertising images that bombard our every waking moment are manipulated in shape, profile, color, and form. In this new era, light can be manipulated with metamaterials to make one object look like another or even cause that objects to vanish, literally before our eyes; not only can the image we see be manipulated, but so can the light itself. Martin Beech is a Professor of Astronomy at Campion College, the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. He has written numerous research articles on topics ranging from meteor physics, Martian meteories, stellar structure and evolution, cosmology, the history of science and mathematical number theory. He lives in Regina with more than visible wife, a brother-in-law, five dogs (a.k.a The Five Pugs of the Apocalypse) and three cats – there are times when he certainly wishes he could be invisible. Introduction.- Chapter 1: Of All Things Visible and Invisible.- Chapter 2: A Very Brief History of Light.- Chapter 3: Mirror Tricks, the Art of Cloaking and Seeing the Impossible.- Chapter 4: Maxwell’s Marvelous Waves.- Chapter 5: The Metamaterial Revolution.- Afterword.- Appendices.- Index.