Harry Potter fans will be delighted with the news that researchers in Berkeley, California are working on something being called metamaterials. Metamaterials are designed to bend light waves around them and maybe the invisibility cloak moves another step towards reality…
Researchers say they are quickly closing in on new types of materials that can cast a cloak of invisibility around objects, fulfilling a fantasy that is as old as ancient myths. Unlike those tales of fictional invisibility, the real-life technologies usually have a catch. Nevertheless, limited forms of invisibility might be available to the military sooner than you think.
The newest research papers depict how metamaterial could be fabricated to bend light in precisely curved paths around the object to be hidden, so that an observer would see right through it - or more accurately, right around it - to the other side.
Theoretically, the metamaterial could work like the helmet of invisibility celebrated in Greek myth or the invisibility cloak that came in so helpful for Harry Potter in JK Rowlings’ novels.