Alert Captain Kirk, Mr. Spoc, and Scotty! ..Tell 'em to fire up the USS Enterprise! Cloak wars are in our near future as scientists have finally developed cloaking technology in materials. Apparently the science is based around deflecting light and controlling how our human eyes interpret what we see.

This calls for some Star Trek intervention...I think Captain Kirk and his crew know more about cloaking devices than anyone, and who else can we look to? You know our government will grab hold of this scary technology and use it for military and domestic purposes. The thing is we will probably never see what's coming at us. Help!

Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people and objects invisible. Researchers have demonstrated for the first time they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects.Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects.

The findings, by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Xiang Zhang, are to be released later this week in the journals Nature and Science.

The new work moves scientists a step closer to hiding people and objects from visible light, which could have broad applications, including military ones.

People can see objects because they scatter the light that strikes them, reflecting some of it back to the eye. Cloaking uses materials, known as metamaterials, to deflect radar, light or other waves around an object, like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream.

Metamaterials are mixtures of metal and circuit board materials such as ceramic, Teflon or fiber composite. They are designed to bend visible light in a way that ordinary materials don't. Scientists are trying to use them to bend light around objects so they don't create reflections or shadows.

It differs from stealth technology, which does not make an aircraft invisible but reduces the cross-section available to radar, making it hard to track.

The research was funded in part by the U.S. Army Research Office and the National Science Foundation's Nano-Scale Science and Engineering Center.  - Time

I have always said that we predict our technological advances through movies and shows, and this just goes to support that hypothesis.

What's next? I am thinking holograms and transporters are next to make their way from the screen into our lives. As I said, we need to call on all the Trekkies to save the day....America is most afraid of what it can't see. Beam me up Scottie...I gotta get outta here!