Sweet Harry Potter, invisibility! Not invisibility in the traditional fantasy sense, just a transparent transformation that’s remarkable. A century since H.G. Wells shocked readers with The Invisible Man, scheming minds reading this article are probably thinking how they can get their hands on this stuff. Take heed, however, since it has not been tested on humans.
The near magical treatment involves a reagent called Scale developed by a team of Japanese scientists. While it seems as if we’re moving into anime territory here (Ghost in the Shell?), the reagent developed by the RIKEN Brain Institute is simply supposed to assist in observing through living tissue. Since scientists these days often use non-harmful dyes to keep tabs on cellular growth and tissue unfortunately obstructs such procedures, it’s then best to render it ‘invisible.’
So far, the scientists over at the RIKEN Institute have tested it on a mouse embryo with startling results–when rendered transparent it looks like a blob of gelatin with two dots for eyes. Like a lot of exciting breakthroughs, the team behind it are looking forward to eventually testing on humans.
Other than embryos, the scientists did the same to different mouse body parts with encouraging results.
Source Gizmag
Filed Under: Technology News