ABSTRACT
Invisibility has been a long-lasting dream of scientists, writers, artists, movie makers, and many more. The notion of invisibility carries a magical aura that sparkles our dreams and make us believe that everything else becomes possible. Certainly achieving invisibility would open the door to a world of applications limited only by our imaginations. The possibility of invisibility, however, has belonged to the realm of mythological tales and science fiction rather than to our real world, until the 21st century. While the invisibility in the tales of yore stemmed purely from “magic” with no attempts to relating the phenomena to actual physics, science fiction has often tried to explore such plausible links. The “invisible man” in Wells (2002) for example used a chemical drink that turned the refractive index of his body identical to that of air thus making him transparent. However, the scientific analogy remained relatively shallow, neglecting the fact that the person would be completely blind if perfectly index matched – the very process of sight crucially depending on absorption of light in the retina, as pointed out in Perelman (1913).
