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.

Suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of engineering, physics, and mathematics and scientific researchers of all types, this is the first authoritative text on invisibility and the science behind it. More than 100 full-color illustrations, plus exercises with solutions. 2010 edition.

Science is said to be on the verge of achieving the ancient dream of making objects invisible. Invisible is a biography of an idea, tied to the history of science over the "longue duree." Taking in Plato to today s science, Ball shows us that the stories we have told about invisibility are not in fact about technical capability but about power, sex, concealment, morality, and corruption. Precisely because they refer to matters that lie beyond our senses, unseen beings and worlds have long been a repository for hopes, fears, and suppressed desires. Ideas of invisibility are, like all ideas rooted in legend, ultimately parables about our own potential and weaknesses. Invisible presents the first comprehensive survey of the roles that the idea of invisibility has played throughout time and culture. This territory takes us from medieval grimoires to cutting-edge nanotechnology, from fairy tales to telecommunications, from camouflage to early cinematography, and from beliefs about ghosts to the dawn of nuclear physics and the discovery of dark energy. Invisible reveals what our age-old fantasies about what lurks unseen, and whether we can enter that realm ourselves, truly say about us. "

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Inspired by the fantastic worlds of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Back to the Future, the renowned theoretical physicist and national bestselling author of The God Equation takes an informed, serious, and often surprising look at what our current understanding of the universe's physical laws may permit in the near and distant future. Teleportation, time machines, force fields, and interstellar space ships—the stuff of science fiction or potentially attainable future technologies? Entertaining, informative, and imaginative, Physics of the Impossible probes the very limits of human ingenuity and scientific possibility.

Since the beginning of time humans and animals have looked for ways to be less visible to opponents. From the art of camouflage to the science of stealth technology, ways have been developed to hide objects and people. Today, scientists are building an “invisibility cloak” that makes objects and people underneath it seem to disappear. Every great invention begins with a great idea! Read all the books in this series and learn about the history and impact of some of the most fascinating innovations and inventions of our time. Explore the idea’s early stages of development, problems encountered along the way, and how each great idea has influenced our lives. From popular culture and the environment to life-saving machines, learn about the ideas, people, and technologies that made it all happen. This series correlates with The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (S.T.E.M.) curriculum initiative.

Slow Light is a popular treatment of today's astonishing breakthroughs in the science of light. Even though we don't understand light's quantum mysteries, we can slow it to a stop and speed it up beyond its Einsteinian speed limit, 186,000 miles/sec; use it for quantum telecommunications; teleport it; manipulate it to create invisibility; and perhaps generate hydrogen fusion power with it. All this is lucidly presented for non-scientists who wonder about teleportation, Harry Potter invisibility cloaks, and other fantastic outcomes. Slow Light shows how the real science and the fantasy inspire each other, and projects light's incredible future.Emory physicist Sidney Perkowitz discusses how we are harnessing the mysteries of light into technologies like lasers and fiber optics that are transforming our daily lives. Science-fiction fantasies like Harry Potter's invisibility cloak are turning into real possibilities. Please click here for more info.

"Synthetic men of mars" is the ninth book of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian series, this book was featured in the newspaper "Argosy Weekly" in six parts released in early 1939. Dejah Thoris, princess of Helium, is badly injured in a deadly collision of two space crafts. Ras Thavas returns as the Mastermind of Mars. Thavas creates a race of supermen on Mars that must be defeated before the entire planet faces a complete totalitarianism. This book was written in the perfect era on the brink of a World War, when the fear of world domination was close at hand.