Invisible Cloak in Development

Scientists have worked out the principles for creating a cloak of invisibility. Their model will use pins to bend light.

"It looks pretty much like fiction, I do realise, but it's completely in agreement with the laws of physics," said lead researcher Vladimir Shalaev, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue.

"Ideally, if we make it real it would work exactly like Harry Potter's invisibility cloak," he said. "It's not going to be heavy because there's going to be very little metal in it."

At the moment their big problem is that their design will bend only one frequency of light at a time. One can still see the object through the rest of the colors in the spectrum. To make a true cloak of invisibility, it will have to block out ALL of the colors. Blocking out the infra-red and ultra-violet would be a nice touch, too.

"How to create a design that works for all colours of visible light at the same time will be a big technical challenge, but we believe it's possible," Prof. Shalaev said. "In principal it's do-able."

Here is the news story. And here is his website.