Hollow Man
Hollow Manhttp://www.moviedatabase.com/Title?0164052
A late 2000 film, directed by PaulVerhoeven. HollowMan is based on the book TheInvisibleMan?, by HerbertGeorgeWells. It depicts the story of a scientist who works out how to make himself invisible. From about that point it deteriorates, and gets no better. Anyway, here is some evidence as to why it would not work anyway:
Firstly therefore, a bit of physics; since to be invisible in air, an object must have a refractive index equal to that of air, ie a refractive index of roughly 1. The HollowMan must have found a way to make the refractive index of his entire body equal to 1. so far, so good.
However, since the reason that lenses focus light is because they have a refractive index not equal to that of air (or 1), therefore light is refracted at the boundaries. It is therefore probable that the HollowMan would have in fact been unable to focus, since the lenses in his eyes would have been useless. Therefore giving his presence away each time he bumped into something.
Even if he had managed to focus, surely invisible retinas would be a bit-of-a-bugger anyway? Something of an over-sight (no pun intended) since they remembered that he would have had invisible eye-lids.
A slightly more major flaw is also the fact that refractive index changes with temperature (ever wondered why you get wavey air on hot days?) Therefore, as the air temperature changed, he would have become increasingly visible, since the refraction of light passing through him would be increasingly different to that of the surrounding air. Thus, when he raised the temperature to prevent his detection by infra-red sensors, he aided it by the naked eye.
Now, what I would love to say here is, "Oh well, it was a great movie, never mind." But frankly. It wasn't. And it just got worse.
(Of course, your analysis extends to all Invisible Man stories, not just HollowMan. Remember the whole pseudo-science thing is a McGuffin. The interesting thing about the InvisibleMan? stories is what would you do if you could become invisible. See InvisibilityOrFlight for more thoughts.)
I agree with you that the story wasn't all that impressive. But what's left is a movie with marvelous special effects, that make it worth seeing anyway. I for one liked the effects, and considered the story marginally interesting.
-- AndreSlabber
I liked the movie. I'm sure someone could make up an answer for every query here, it was fiction after all.
Like the scientific analysis. LarryNiven did a similar treatment of Superman in Man of steel, woman of Kleenex.
What about a more left-field answer?
There are organic cells that are photo-reactive; they emit light when struck by it. An extension of this would be a cell that, when hit by light on one side, emitted light at the same frequency on the other. Effectively, the cell would be invisible. Any loss in energy could be made up chemically.
Now, extropolate this out so that normal cells could be converted to such a state chemically. Bingo, a technical premise for the Invisible Man. He would still have been able to see; his retinas would still absorb light, and then re-emit it. Air temperature wouldn't effect it either.
Anyway, the key to enjoying these sort of movies is the WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief?.
That only works from one position. The best way to see that is to see the third challenge in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade -- the bridge looks invisible when you are looking at it from the correct direction but if you look at from any other angle, you see that it's just painted.
My problem with the movie is that it wasn't even consistent within itself - like how did he get back into the lab while invisible?
How about instead of being invisible, getting everybody's mind to refuse to see you. Doesn't do much for cameras, but it's better than nothing...
No, it's not. It's TheShadow (based on the radio program of the same name), starring Alec Baldwin, and nothing is better use of your time.
Also seen in HitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy: It described a field (the SomebodyElsesProblem field) that would make other people not want to see you.
Also, from ScienceFiction, Larry Niven's The Gift From Earth has a character whose psi power makes people's pupils contract when he does not wish to be seen. Creatively, Niven asserted that this made it impossible for people to concentrate on the character, so that they would simply forget he existed.
(Ah, the arguments of D&D)
See also: "The Hollow Men", by T.S. Eliot. (http://lucien.blight.com/~sparkle/poems/hollow.html)
... Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us - if at all - not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men. ...
Perfect invisibility is tricky for a variety of reasons, many of which you mentioned. Not to mention problems at traffic crossings. Let's examine some alternatives...
You could make a couple of holes in an invisibility field or an invisible creature for the optical receptors. This would be near perfect invisibility (Ignoring all other factors which make it hard to be invisible) except for two hovering black spots which people may or may not notice. I don't particularly like this one.
I was quite good at being invisible when I was a child. Look like you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, look like you belong there or look busy and people generally won't bother you. In more adult situations (Like being behind the loading dock after midnight) the mileage you get out of these tricks may vary. However, they are good in quite a variety of other situations. Anyone who has done slight of hand magic is aware of how much you can get away with. Anyway...
How about weaving a chamelon cloak out of optical fibers. Run several million (or billion) fibers to a central computer which couldn't be larger than a cigarette pack. The computer would process the signals coming in on one side and output the correct light on the other side. For the foreseeable future this would be too slow to maintain invisbility while you were moving (You'd get that disturbing Predator effect) but standing still it should be MUCH better than camoflage. And since the computer can see the environment, no worries about invisible retinas -- just wear a head mounted display that takes a feed from the computer. -- BruceIde
JohnCarpenter? did a good job on this topic with his "Memoirs of an invisible man" with ChevyChase?, DarylHannah? and SamNeill?. It turns out being invisible is not so much fun after all. http://amazon-uk.imdb.com/Title?0104850
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