In a weird twist of fate we could have new technologies combined for results that are NOT anticipated.

Meta skin for invisibility cloaks is out now. Grab some before it disappears – bwahaha.

All fun aside, from (link):

The meta-skin is so named because it is made of metamaterials (composites not found in nature) that can manipulate electromagnetic waves. The metaskin created at Iowa State is made with rows of what are referred to as electric split ring resonators that are embedded in layers of silicone sheets. The resonaters are rings that are each about 2.5 mm (0.1 inch) in radius and about 0.5 mm (0.02 inches) thick. They are filled with a commercial metal alloy called galinstan that is liquid at room temperature and is frequently used to replace mercury due to its lower toxicity. Once the rings are filled with galinstan they can trap and suppress radar waves at certain frequencies. Stretching the meta-skin changes the size of the rings which changes the frequency range it can suppress, thus making the skin tunable. Tests showed radar suppression with the meta-skin was about 75 percent in the frequency range of 8 to 10 gigahertz. The researchers involved in the project point out that the biggest difference in the meta-skin and more traditional stealth technologies that attempt to create a barrier to radar waves, is that the meta-skin has the potential to absorb all of the radar waves, effectively acting like a radar wave sponge. While the researchers admit that cloaking an entire stealth bomber in their meta-skin to make it invisible to the naked eye will require advances in nanomaterials, they believe their project has proven the validity of eventually making that a reality. In November of last year, scientists at Huazhong University of Science and Technology created a radar absorbent system that was also tunable, but it wasn’t created with any type of meta materials. The paper outlining the work of the Iowa State Researchers was recently published in Science Reports.

(C) Iowa State University

Iowa State’s associate professor Liang Dong (left), and Prof. Jiming Song with the material.

A graph showing the size and structure of the split ring resonators in the meta-skin.

This may have even bigger implications than having 8 kg equipment that makes your prosthetic hand feel or bolt-in skin/bone infection risking finance wrecking bolts or other “high tech” they want us to ruin our stumps and health with.

With this, you can:

• Hide with a disability. You are there but not see. Alright, people will seriously bump into you or drive you to slithereens but I guess until that meta skin is market ready they will have that solved.
• Buy a robot with empathy (seeing as if real people with empathy, also surrounding the subject of robotics, may be less frequently encountered by many amputees than assumed) and cloak that. Saves other people their embarrassment – particularly once you start cuddling or tell dry satirical jokes they can never quite understand. “What do you tell a man with an amputated arm that is standing at a red light? Nothing – he has been told everything already”.
• Wear a torn up glove on your iLimb – but no one can see that that is what you are doing.
• Wear a myoelectric prosthetic arm that quite simply is not charged.
• Do not wear a prosthetic arm and do not wear meta skin but tell people you wear meta skin on your hand.
• Seriously avoid sun burns.
• Expose people that stand behind you.
• Cover the rest of your body but not the disabled arm. Then take pictures of what happens then but no one notices that that is what you do.
• Cover your glasses with it, maybe you can see through the dirt and smudge that builds up. That’d be neat.
• Cut out Christmas snow star patterns and cover your disabled arm with it. “See through decoration”.
• Cut out flags or ornaments or symbols or emblems and cover any body part with it. “See through decoration”.
• Wear that texture discrimination 8 kg (or so) equipment but cover it so one sees that that is why you are huffing and puffing that much. Then go to a carpet store, touch the carpets there with your high tech texture discriminating prosthetic and go, “oh, feels like carpets”. Great achieve!

This amplifies the painful fun that could be had with the Emperor’s New Clothes strategy.