Yes! It's the invisible¹ shed²!
At last, some proper arse-kicking new tech³
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Life is often disappointing for the technology enthusiast, unless you're the pathetically easily-pleased kind who's impressed by the ability to update your web page while having a dump. Proper new technology - robot or brainchip-monkey butlers, flying cars, headmounted energy weapons for one's swimming-pool menagerie - these have long been promised but never made good.
Thus it is that many harassed family heads, unable to palm off tiresome domestic tasks to the monkey butler or cope with school run/commute issues using jetpacks, have turned to another form of possible hi-tech solace. We refer, of course, to the invisible shed - a small haven of peace and solitude undetectable by importunate other halves, offspring etc. Its imminent arrival has been predicted by no less a boffinry heavyweight than Sir John Pendry of Imperial College.
(We should note that he rubbished such foolish Harry Potter style notions as an invisibility cloak, indicating a certain bracing British trustworthiness.)
Today should be a glorious day, then, as it brings news that the first ever piece of functioning invisible-shed material has now been made: opening the door, as it were, to the invisible door.
But in fact, no, today's just another disappointing techno day. Yes, some invisible-shed siding has been made. But it only works when viewed in the infrared. Also, it's less than a hundredth of a millimetre across.
So, ahem:
Yes! It's the microscopically tiny invisible (in infrared) shed! Kind of!
Etc.
Semi-proper layman's popscience coverage from the Beeb here: hardcore boffinry writeup for Nature Materials subscribers here. ®
Bootnotes
¹ Not across most of the electromagnetic spectrum
² Not really
³ If your arse is very small
COMMENTS
Re: easily impressed users
You swine. I'd actually managed to survive, keyboard intact and sense of humour merely tickled, throughout the dump-related exchanges of fire until I hit your post......
easily impressed users
"...unless you're the pathetically easily-pleased kind who's impressed by the ability to update your web page while having a dump."
High-velocity coffee -> monitor + keyboard.
Damn you! I know not to drink hot coffee while reading BOFH (or anything in the Bootnotes section, for added safety!) but physics articles aren't supposed to lead off with something like that!
We have the 'NSFW' tag (which we know really means "safe for work if you control the web proxy as long as nobody's looking over your shoulder"). How about adding a 'NSFRWDHCIYHASOH' ("Not Safe For Reading While Drinking Hot Coffee If You Have A Sense Of Humour") tag? Ok, sure, it's a bit lengthy, but I offer it with the proper spelling for the Register side of the pond!)
@Martin, re: small visible peephole
Make that peephole an inch in diameter and watch hilarity ensue as people react to the [seemingly] disembodied eye that just walked past (or disembodied other things if the "reverse fig leaf", ahem, takes off).
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