Posthuman Blues

Invisibility Shields Planned by Engineers

"The researchers' studies show that spherical and cylindrical objects coated with plasmonic shielding material produce very little light scattering. These objects, when hit by the right wavelength of light, were seen to become so small that they were almost invisible."

The UFO connotations here are pretty obvious. The first reaction (to some) is that this new invisibility technique must be derived from back-engineered UFOs -- which is possible. However, I'm betting certain unidentified "spherical and cylindrical" UFOs seen in our skies are perfectly terrestrial, their purpose to condition witnesses to the very shapes that so conveniently lend themselves to plasmonic shielding (a frighteningly effective stealth technology that we're only now hearing about).

In the event of an unintentional sighting, the military could misdirect attention to "flying saucers," which -- as Peter Jennings' show made plainly clear for any remaining doubters -- the mainstream media treats with scorn or, at best, carefully maintained apathy.

This isn't to dismiss actual unknown craft using weird stealth technology. As Budd Hopkins and Carol Rainey document in "Sight Unseen," key aspects of the alien abduction phenomenon (as popularly conceived, at least) rely on the presumed ability of alien craft to render themselves invisible -- or as close to "invisible" as physics allow. Taken to its paranoid extreme, this means we could be under constant surveillance by omnipresent alien craft . . . and never know it.

There's actually a body of reports that suggests that "real" UFOs are using something very much like plasmonics: Close encounter witnesses who recall seeing the interior of alien ships sometimes paradoxically describe the inside of the craft as larger than the craft's exterior.

Could this be due to an external coating of light-absorbing shielding, making the UFO appear significantly smaller than it actually is?