India, June 13 -- In some ways, he is himself the stuff of science-fiction.

For thousands of years, dating to ancient Greek and Welsh myths, then sci-fi and the worlds of HG Wells and Harry Potter, storytellers and scientists have toyed with the idea of the invisibility cloak.

Wells, who foresaw the aircraft and army tank, atomic bomb and Wikipedia, wrote of a scientist committed to invisibility in The Invisible Man (1897). This scientist learnt how to change the way light reflected off his body.

In Canada, George Eleftheriades has done something similar. He can't erase himself from view, but he has so far been able to hide large, bulky objects from radar, using just a thin layer of rather magical antennae.

It's a bit like noise-cance...