In 1897, HG Wells's science fiction novel The Invisible Man was published in England. The book told about a scientist who managed to make himself invisible with the help of some kind of apparatus that gave the human body absolute optical transparency.
Wells, however, made a number of mistakes. First, oddly enough, the writer did not take into account the obvious fact that such an invisible person would be blind, because light would freely pass through him, and not be refracted on the retina. Secondly, the hero of the novel, the physicist Griffin, claimed that he was invisible while he was alive, because he managed to change only living tissue. But the human body is not only living tissue. The cells of the skin epithelium, nails, and hair are constantly dying and renewed.
So the invisible person would rather be like a vague ghost. And finally, the food Griffin ate was visible until "fully absorbed by the body." But no food is digested "completely." Most of it is excreted from the body naturally. In addition, there is always a significant amount of dust in the air that would settle on the skin of an invisible person, but these are details.
So, it turns out that it is impossible to create an invisible man? There is no such thing as HG Wells. But let's not criticize the science fiction writer, let us take his novel for an allegory and turn to later times.
Eldridge and stele technologies
Newton argued that light always travels only in a straight line. Einstein, on the other hand, argued that light rays can be bent near massive space objects. Is it possible to create such curvatures artificially, on Earth?
The history of the so-called Philadelphia Experiment is well known, it was allegedly carried out by the US Navy in October 1943. The purpose of the experiment is to make the destroyer Eldridge invisible. It was assumed that electromagnetic fields would cause bending of light and radio waves around the destroyer. Einstein himself, and even the legendary Nikola Tesla, allegedly took part in the experiment (allegedly again!). The latter, however, is unlikely, since January 1943 is officially considered the date of Tesla's death. We know about what happened to the Eldridge next from numerous publications and two feature films.
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But this is all from the field of assumptions, but the real reality is a technique for reducing the visibility of combat vehicles in radar, infrared and other areas of the detection spectrum using special geometric shapes, radio-absorbing materials and coatings, or stele technology. True, it is impossible to achieve complete absorption of waves. And here it is worth recalling that during the conflict in Yugoslavia, an American plane, created according to this method, was shot down. A snide inscription soon appeared on the board of the fallen car: "Sorry, we did not know that he was invisible."
Strange incident at Castleford
In the small American town of Castleford, there were only eight police officers on duty - the place was surprisingly calm. Wallace Bay military base adjoined the town, but, contrary to usual, there were no problems with its personnel. On the territory of the base there was a certain object of the Ministry of Defense, called the "Duggen Institute", about which no one really knew anything.
On the night of July 19, 1991, Police Officer David Jones carried out routine street law enforcement. Now let's give the floor to the service officer himself.
“At about three o'clock in the morning, I was not far from the gates of Wallace Bay base. They started to open, which surprised me, since usually no one left at night. An army jeep burst out of there at high speed. I instinctively retreated into the shadows of the houses, so that they could hardly see me from the car. She roared alongside. There was nobody behind the wheel. It's incredible, but true. The car slowed down a little and turned a corner. Judging by the sound of the engine, she confidently ran through the deserted streets. Stunned, I could not move. He stood there until a few minutes later the jeep returned to the base and the gate closed behind him."
The policeman's sincerity is not in doubt, but is his message so strange? It could be testing a car equipped with television cameras and remotely controlled by radio. But further events suggest that an invisible person was sitting at the wheel of the jeep.
Tragedy in Bangor
Jones' report did not seem to have been paid much attention, and the policeman himself was soon transferred to a new duty station. Some time later, the Duggen Institute was either disbanded or relocated, and the Wallace Bay base was closed. One of the Institute's employees, Darrell Barnes, moved to Bangor and settled in his own home. There, on October 3, 1997, his corpse was found with a gunshot wound to the occipital part of the skull. It didn’t sound like a robbery - a fairly large sum of money remained in Barnes’s office, almost in plain sight. Valuable collections of stamps and old coins were also intact. But all the information stored in computers was completely destroyed. CCTV footage was also missing. And - no traces of penetration. The check showed that no one interfered with the operation of the equipment. But Barnes did not shoot himself in the back of the head!
Darrell Barnes's letter
Only after a long search did the police find a cache in Barnes's desk. There were several sheets of paper, handwritten by the scientist himself. It was an unfinished letter about his work at the Duggen Institute. Apparently, it was intended for the media - obviously, Barnes intended to make this information public. This is what he wrote: “At the Duggen Institute, I worked in the group of Dr. Malcolm Murdoch, we were developing the so-called knapsack amplifier. The idea was to create a device that deflects light waves at a short distance. Thus, a person armed with this device would become invisible. But in that case, he himself would not have seen anything? Not at all. The knapsack amplifier did not affect the free passage of infrared waves. It was enough to put on glassesconverting infrared waves into visible light, and our invisible person would not only see - moreover, he would see at night as well as during the day …”.
Barnes went on to hint at the possibility of a more detailed account of the work of the Duggen Institute. It is possible that someone interested in preserving these secrets became aware of the scientist's intentions. So what, the invisible creature that he created entered Barnes' house? But then it cost nothing to simulate the suicide of a scientist - to shoot not in the back of the head, but, say, in the temple, toss a weapon. And if they did not do this, then, of course, deliberately. This was an unequivocal warning to anyone who might try to follow Darrell Barnes's path.
Invisibility cloak
In June 2011, specialists from the University of California at Berkeley (USA) managed to create a model of a real "invisibility cloak". The development of scientists is really capable of hiding an object from human eyes and, one might say, represents the world's first example of such a device operating in the visible wavelength range.
Recall that all previous versions of "invisibility cloaks" worked in the infrared range, but the new development of scientists is able to make objects invisible in the entire range of wavelengths corresponding to visible light.
The principle of operation of the new raincoat is as follows - an object is placed under a protective covering, which looks like a mirror, and since the object below is not visible through this covering, the observer from the side does not know that there is something under the mirror.
Thus, the visible light, as it were, "bypasses" the hidden object. For this, scientists have created special materials with a variable refractive index (metamaterials, they do not exist in nature).
In order to give the composite material the properties of an "invisibility cloak", the scientists placed a silicon nitride waveguide on a transparent nanoporous silicon oxide substrate (a nanoporous silicon oxide substrate has a lower refractive index than a waveguide). Then the scientists made nano-sized holes in the nitride layer, and thus the material acquired the necessary properties.
Invisible power
But why is the development of the Duggen Institute surrounded by such a mystery? An invisible army cannot be created on such a basis. The enemy will quickly realize what the matter is, infrared scanners will do the rest. Well, and if we are talking about sabotage or, even more so, intelligence operations? You can't hang an infrared scanner on every door. Modern war is, first of all, information war. However, it may be not only (or not so much) in this. Secrets of invisible power are too much of a temptation not to become the object of close attention of many interested structures.
Author: Andrey BYSTROV, Secrets of the 20th century