It seems that Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak exists…in the lab at least:
SCIENTISTS in the United States have reported a further step towards a celebrated ”invisibility cloak” by masking a large, free-standing object in three dimensions.
The lab work is the latest advance in a scientific frontier that uses novel materials to manipulate light, a trick that is of huge interest to the military in particular.
Reporting in the New Journal of Physics, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin cloaked an 18-centimetre tube from light in the microwave part of the energy spectrum.
Those hoping for a Harry Potter-style touch of wizardry would be disappointed. To the human eye, the object was still visible.
But, say the researchers, the experiment is important proof of a principle that so-called plasmonic meta-materials can achieve a cloaking effect.
A war plane cloaked with such materials could achieve ”super-stealth” status by becoming invisible in all directions to radar microwaves, said co-lead investigator Andrea Alu.
