Invisibility Cloak Soon to be a Reality
Posted on May 29, 2006
An MSNBC.com article explains how the invisibility cloak, long fantasized by fantasy and science fiction writers, could soon be a reality. Researchers say they could make an object invisible by using special metamaterials to bend light around the object. People looking at the object would then see right through it.
"The cloak would act like you've opened up a hole in space," Duke University's David Smith, one of Pendry's co-authors, explained in a news release. "All light or other electromagnetic waves are swept around the area, guided by the metamaterial to emerge on the other side as if they had passed through an empty volume of space."The article says sound waves could also be blocked and used to create a Get Smart like "Cone of Silence."Pendry told MSNBC.com that the cloak wouldn't reflect any light, and wouldn't cast a shadow either. "It would be like Peter Pan had lost his shadow," he said, referring to the fictional character who had to have his shadow stitched back on.
Dreams come true, with a few catches
Theoretically at least, the metamaterial could work like the helmet of invisibility celebrated in Greek myth, or the cloaking device that hid Romulan and Klingon vessels in the "Star Trek" series, or the invisibility cloak that came in so handy for Harry Potter in J.K. Rowlings' novels."Fiction has predicted the course of science for some time. ... Maybe these Harry Potter novels were ahead of their time," Pendry said, half-jokingly.