“Invisibility: The History and Science of How Not to Be Seen” by Gregory J. Gbur

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Rating: 5/5 Stars

A fantastic and readable book on the history of invisibility. But before getting there, the author covers the history of the nature of light from the past through to the present. The excepts of fictional stories featuring invisibility found at the start of each chapter are also very interesting.

Once the nature of light is given, the author then shows how current research is looking into ways to take advantage of how light behaves to make things invisible, either by making light ‘avoid’ the object of interest, or by destructively interfering with the light emitted by the objects, so it cannot be detected.

The book closes with a look at how the technology and science used to make objects invisible to light can also be used to make objects invisible to other forms of energy, like sound, water waves and even earthquakes.

One property of charged particles mentioned in the book was especially interesting and new to me. Most people are probably told that accelerated charged particles emit electromagnetic radiation (light), which was one of the reasons models of atoms with orbiting electrons were hard to get correct before the advent of quantum physics. But the author points out that it is possible to accelerate charged particles on a small sphere without the emission of light, making such spheres invisible.

‘Trivia’ like this, as well as a good presentation of historial and current day research in to the properties of light, make the book an excellent read.

Book read from 2023/10/23 to 2023/11/02