The Economist: How to fool infrared vision gear into thinking you are not there

Description

ANIMALS have made use of camouflage to hide from one another for almost as long as eyes have been around to spot them. Humans, being copycats, have made extensive use of camouflage tricks they have seen in nature by applying concealing colouration to everything from clothing to tanks. A way to thwart camouflage, though, is to employ infrared-viewing technology to look for the heat emitted by an otherwise-camouflaged object. Designing something that can prevent this, and can thus carry camouflage into the infrared, has proved tricky. But Coskun Kocabas of the University of Manchester, in England, thinks he can do it.