It's unlikely to occur by swallowing a pill or donning（1） a special cloak（2）, but invisibility could be possible in the not too distant future, according to research published on Monday.
But Dr Ulf Leonhardt, a theoretical physicist at St Andrews University in Scotland, believes the most plausible（3） example is the Invisible Woman, one of the Marvel Comics superheroes in the "Fantastic Four."
"She guides light around her using a force field in this cartoon. This is what could be done in practice," Leonhardt said. "That comes closest to what engineers will probably be able to do in the future."
Invisibility is an optical illusion that the object or person is not there. Leonhardt uses the example of water circling around a stone. The water flows in, swirls（4） around the stone and then leaves as if nothing was there.
"If you replace the water with light then you would not see that there was something present because the light is guided around the person or object. You would see the light coming from the scenery behind as if there was nothing in front," he said.
周一发布的一项研究说隐身也许能在不久的将来实现，但也许不是吞下一片药或者披上一件斗蓬那样简单。
苏格兰圣安德鲁斯大学理论物理学家厄弗·莱奥哈德说最贴近现实的应该是《神奇漫画》中《神奇四侠》里面的超级英雄—隐身女。
莱奥哈德说：“漫画中，她利用能量场引导周围的光线。这与未来工程师们要做的事情很相似。”
所谓的隐形是一种视觉幻象，使人认为物体或者人不在那里。莱奥哈德用水绕过石头的例子来说明：水流遇到石头后会自动分流绕过石头，之后再汇合，犹如什么都没有遇到过一样继续前进。
他说：“如果你把水换成光线，由于光线被引导绕开了人或者物体，你将看不到那儿有什么东西。你所能看见的是来自物体背后的光线，就好像前面什么都没有一样。”
