Do you wish you could avoid the boss who keeps bringing up an impending deadline? Do you wish you could be the master of hide-and-seek or an expert cat burglar?
Or do you wish you could sneak away from that one person who drives you insane with senseless chatter every time you go near them? If you answered "yes" to any of the previous questions, being invisible might just be the solution you're looking for.
The idea of escaping attention or responsibilities by disappearing or turning invisible is an idea that often captures the imagination of kids and adults alike. Many sci-fi and fantasy books feature devices or spells that can turn someone invisible. However, invisibility may not be quite as realistic a power as some books make it seem.
There are several possible downsides to being invisible, but those wouldn't even be a problem unless you could manage to turn invisible in the first place. And it's the turning invisible part that's really difficult. I've put together a few ideas about how it could be done, though.
Invisible Possibilities
Using some kind of light manipulation to become invisible isn’t as simple as sci-fi authors make it seem. The basic problem with light manipulation is that absorbing or deflecting all the light around an object would create an object that was completely black or completely white. It wouldn’t be invisible at all. Reflecting light through some type of mirror ability could be more feasible, but it’s still a flawed concept if you take it at face value.
First off, it's pretty obvious that this ability would work much better in darkness. You know when you're driving or riding along in the car, and some other bored passenger decides to use some reflective surface to get the sun in your eyes? Well, that's exactly what would happen with a perfect mirroring ability.
You would look like a walking mirror, glare and all. It wouldn't be super stealthy, to say the least, though it could be more useful at night. To make a mirror ability work at all, there would have to be some kind of anti-glare something worked into the spell or device that was causing you to become a giant mirror. Still, just mirroring your surroundings wouldn't be terribly useful in most circumstances.
If your mirroring ability was used in dim light or in the sky, where looking like just any other cloud would be decently stealthy, basic mirroring could be effective. This kind of mirroring would be more useful on an aircraft. It would only be useful for stealth purposes so long as no other aircraft came close enough to see themselves reflected in your aircraft’s hull.
What you would really want (if you wanted to turn invisible) would be some kind of ability that could mirror what was behind you onto the front of your body (and vice versa). That way, it would seem like people were essentially seeing through you to whatever you were standing in front of. This would be a lot more complicated than basic mirroring, but it would also be more realistic and useful.
In fact, this method has been used, both in nature and in scientific experiments, to camouflage. And while it isn’t true invisibility, it is a lot closer to completely concealing a person or animal than most other methods.
More Than Rocks and Leaves
Camouflage, while not true invisibility, is much more realistic than trying to become completely undetectable to the naked eye. Countless animals in nature use some type of camouflage. Predators such as the praying mantis come in a variety of plant-like shapes and colors to keep from alerting their prey to their presence. Prey such as moths or butterflies take a similar approach to camouflage, though they do it to avoid being eaten by predators.
There are even more dramatic examples of camouflage in certain types of octopus that can change color, shape, and even texture to imitate their surroundings. These creatures can camouflage in less than a minute and be nearly undetectable if you glance away before they’re finished. Animals like chameleons are slower at camouflaging, but the idea is the same.
If those camouflaging abilities could be mimicked by technology (or some type of spell), they would work best in a natural environment. The hard, barely porous surfaces of cities (concrete, glass, etc.) would be hard to imitate and even harder to hide amongst. However, as long as no one was going to brush against you, simply looking camouflaged like the surfaces behind you could be enough to seem invisible.
A scientific group in Japan has experimented with technology that does exactly that. They developed an actual “invisibility cloak” that functions under certain circumstances. The technology uses a camera placed behind a person to record what’s behind them. The images it picks up are projected onto the front of the “invisibility cloak,” making it seem like you can see through the person.
Though this technology seems amazing (and it is), it isn’t terribly useful as of now. It only works from certain angles, and the person has to be more or less standing still for it to work. If they moved away from the camera, or if someone looked at them from the side or back, they wouldn’t blend in very well.
A real life invisibility cloak would need cameras and projectors built into the actual cloak; this technology would be rather heavy, especially if you added in a power source to fuel the technology. Even with some kind of perfected invisibility cloak that had cameras, projectors, and a power source small enough to make it work on the move, quick movement would still be nearly impossible.
Jiggling the cameras would make the image projected on the cloak wiggle as well. You would likely be looking at a patch of sky one moment and the ground the next moment if someone was running. It wouldn’t be terribly stealthy. If you could actually see all the way through someone through some bodily change such as a loss of all coloring, you might have more success in becoming invisible.
As Clear As Glass
Some sci-fi stories show people who are completely see through due to some genetic mutation or high-tech serum that changes them. This leads them to be more or less invisibile, as long as you don’t look at the person too closely. In theory, it’s a good idea; if you see through someone, you can’t see them, at least not easily. They are essentially invisible.
However, “essentially” is the key word. At a glance, a see-through person could be overlooked. Careful inspection would lead to their discovery, though. Water, while see-through, isn’t invisible if you pour it out and let it fall through the air. The light reflecting off it lends us some idea of the shape of the water droplets. The results of a completely see-through person would be similar.
In nature, there are certain see-through animals (specifically marine animals) that use their transparency as a way to escape predators. As I stated before, they’re difficult to spot at first glance, and even if a predator noticed them somehow, it would be difficult to make out specifics about their shape. This makes it easier for the transparent animal to escape predators.
It would also make it easier for a transparent person to escape whatever or whoever was chasing them (assuming they had turned “invisible” to escape something). It just wouldn’t be fool proof. Being see through would be, relatively speaking, a more realistic biological ability than mirroring someone’s surroundings or camouflaging on the move.
Most bodily fluids (besides blood) are already see-through. Though most of the cells that make up your body aren’t transparent, they could supposedly be made transparent with some type of serum. All the melanin, or natural coloring, of your body would have to be removed for this to work. There would definitely be some downsides, though.
The Downsides
Invisibility comes with some inherent downsides that would probably make being invisible not quite so useful as you’d think. For one thing, you would most likely be blind while you were invisible. We see when light reflects off our surroundings into our retinas. In our retinas, that light is converted into signals that go to our brain, where they are translated into visual images.
If someone reflected all light (like a mirror) before any of it could enter their retinas, they would be unable to see. The same would be true if all light passed through someone (because they were see-through). If someone was using technology to project images onto some kind of “invisibility cloak,” they might be able to see. Assumably, they would be able to project the images from outside of their cloak onto the inside of the cloak in front of their eyes, allowing them to see.
Fashion Disaster
Blindness isn’t the only possible downside, however. Clothing would provide tricky as well. Modesty wouldn’t be the biggest concern if no one could see you. The lack of protection could cause problems. If it were to rain or snow, if it was terribly cold or if you were hit by some sort of attack, even if you just fell onto something sharp or rough - you would want protection.
If you were either a walking mirror or completely transparent, you wouldn’t be able to wear normal clothes without giving away your shape and position. Assumably, you could have transparent or mirrored clothes that complemented your ability, but these types of outfits would pose a problem when you wanted to stop being invisible.
It would be difficult to walk around unnoticed if you were visible but your clothes were either strangely mirrored or transparent enough to get you arrested for public indecency. The best solution would be some kind of outfit (similar to the projection outfit used in the camouflage method of invisibility). This would be an outfit that could change with you and become discreet when you became visible.
Wrapping Up
Invisibility is a power that’s often fantasized about by people who just want to escape from whatever mess they’re stuck in. Many authors use it as an easy escape for their characters in an emergency. In real life, the development of “invisibility cloaks” is part of a real experiment that shows some promise.
However, the three main types of invisibility - mirroring, camouflage/projecting, and becoming transparent - all have their downsides. In real life, none of those methods is remotely realistic for an actual emergency situation (or even just for moving around). Blindness and the vulnerability caused by possible nakedness mean that, if those methods were fully developed, the downsides might outweigh the benefits.
The idea of being stuck as an “invisible” mirrored or transparent person with no sight and no way to wear clothes without looking like a disembodied outfit is terrifying. But if you could control it, if you could become visible or invisible at will, would temporary blindness be worth it? Would walking around in the middle of winter without any clothes on be worth it?
What would you do to overcome those drawbacks? If you have an answer, comment below. If you have any suggestions for other super powers you’d like me to cover, don't hesitate to comment on that, too.