Invisibility Cloaking Technology Devised

Electromagnetic waves would flow around an object hidden inside the metamaterial cloak just as water in a river flows virtually undisturbed around a smooth rock, Smith said

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Simply put, an SEP field is an energy field similar to an invisibility field. When somebody, or something, is surrounded by a SEP field, the human brain perceives it as "somebody else's problem", and therefore will be incapable of paying attention to the object (or even seeing it, or recognizing its existence) unless it is being specifically looked for. A primary example of this was given in the third book Life, the Universe and Everything, when a UFO (a spaceship powered by the Bistromathic drive owned by the character Slartibartfast) lands in the middle of a cricket ground during a match, and the assembled crowd completely ignores it. Another prime example occurs when the aforementioned ship's field is extended so that the characters fail to notice the fact that they cannot breathe or the fact that the asteroid that they are standing on does not have enough gravitational force to hold them down. It should be noted that an SEP field won't render an object invisible if it is expected to be there, and a SEP-cloaked object may be noticed out of the corner of the eye. The SEP field requires much less energy than a normal invisibility field (a single torch battery can run it for over a hundred years) due to the natural propensity of humans to see things as Somebody Else's Problem. This is very close to the idea suggested by Terry Pratchett (who has often been compared to Douglas Adams): People do not see whatever they are sure cannot be there.

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