Invisibility is the most requested superpower after flight. It has endless applications from espionage to theft to avoiding your boss when you want to leave early on Friday. And there are lots of superhero examples accordingly, with one of the best being Invisible Girl from the Fantastic Four: One logical drawback of her ability is that only her body can become invisible, not her clothing (with the exception of her specially designed supersuit). If that sounds familiar, you’ve probably also seen The Incredibles. It’s the Pixar version of the Fantastic Four, and my recommendation if you can only pick one movie of those two to watch. Violet is the Pixar analog of Invisible Girl. I’m not going to try to discuss or explain Wonder Woman’s invisible jet, but please enjoy this hilarious representation from the 70’s TV show anyway. And if I may step out of comic-inspired characters for a moment, I can’t possibly write about invisibility without bringing up the Invisible Man (spectacular in both the H.G. Wells novel and the 1933 movie). Going completely transparent sounds like quite a task that even biomimicry cannot solve. But let’s look closer at the mechanism behind this disappearing act: camouflaging pigments to match the surrounding environment exactly. That sounds precisely like my next favorite topic of discussion after superheroes: cephalopods! Squids, octopuses, and cuttlefish have the most remarkable skin qualities that let them blend into their environment. Watch this video and play “find the octopus before it finds you.” Amazing right? How do cephalopods achieve such rapid color and texture changes? The have specialized cells called chromatophores that they control with tiny muscles. The octopus can contract or expand these little pigment sacs on command to make one color dominate the others. One of the coolest things discovered about these chromatophores is that they respond to music when electrically stimulated. This falls under the scientific category of "I can't believe people get to do this stuff!" A special species in Indonesia known as the mimic octopus doesn’t just blend into its environment, it also disguises itself as other, more threatening animals. This sounds like another incredible disguising superhero act: Mystique has very cephalopod-like abilities to change the color and texture of her skin. And unlike the afore-mentioned invisible ladies, she can create a layer that resembles clothing with this texture control. She has an additional ability to mimic voices perfectly, but I can’t explain that particular feat with my marine buddies. Mystique uses her abilities to infiltrate fortresses and impersonate powerful political or military officials and give her own orders. She can even get past a retina scanner with her eye-imitations! So how close are we to "disappearing"? Some work on artificial chromatophores came out of the University of Bristol last year and looks a little something like this: The military has already been pouring money into active camouflage projects that are trying to take this technology to a larger level. BAE systems has developed an active camouflage product called Adaptiv that uses controlled heating of discs to disguise military vehicles from anyone using infrared-detecting night vision goggles. Cornell researchers are starting from the ground up working on optical illusions at the nano-scale. Here’s a cool example of a real invisibility cloak in action! It’s not going to fool anyone walking around in it, but applying this to reduce blind spots while driving is a spectacular idea. The take home message here is that I know all of the good YouTube videos related to cephalopods, but you should still pay me money to watch octopuses if you want this technology to get anywhere. Any takers?
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Alanna DurkinExploring the realm of biologically inspired design one superhero example at a time, with some other natural sciences mixed in. Archives
September 2016
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