KM Viray
If you’re a Harry Potter fan, you’re probably very well aware that Harry Potter has magical cloak that renders him totally invisible for as long as he’s under it. If you think that’s just mere fantasy, you’d better think again. Scientists are actually currently working on an invisibility cloak.
Researchers from China have been conducting a study to create what they are calling an “ultrathin invisibility skin cloak for visible light.” Basically, this invisibility cloak can be used to conceal an object from view by guiding light around it. According to researcher Xingjie Ni, the team veered away from the usual bulky and heavy coats that are difficult to maneuver in. The team instead designed an invisibility cloak so thin like a sheet that it can be wrapped around an object. They designed a two-dimensional meta-material surface and used flexible, highly reflective materials that could be manufactured on large scale to hide large objects.
Simply put, the logic behind the invisibility is light waves are manipulated by the cloak so it will seem invisible.
Light is basically how we get to see objects and people. Studies have shown that light bounces off of things and becomes distorted, which helps a person see the angles and curves of an object. The technology behind the cloak is that it is covered with “nanoantennas made of tiny gold blocks of different sizes that can counteract that distortion, making it seem to an observer like the light is coming from a flat surface.”
At the moment, the cloak can only cover very tiny objects, so there’s a long way to go before people can make themselves invisible or hard to see.
In the Unites States, other research teams are also conducting studies on how to create their own version of an invisibility cloak. One of these teams is from the University of California, San Diego.
“Invisibility may seem like magic at first, but its underlying concepts are familiar to everyone. All it requires is a clever manipulation of our perception,” says Boubacar Kanté, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. “Full invisibility still seems beyond reach today, but it might become a reality in the near future thanks to recent progress in cloaking devices.”
Banner photo from wccftech.com
