Norton Scientific Journal : Making things invisible now possible

Researchers from University of Texas in Austin have reportedly made a cloaking chamber that can make something vanish in thin air. The study was published this month in the Norton Scientific Journal New Journal of Physics after more than 5 years of constant experimentation.

A cylindrical tube created from insulating material with strips of copper made objects within it invisible to microwaves.

Things reflect electromagnetic waves and light even when they are just lying around. That is how radar detectors and devices become alert of the presence of ships and airplanes — in the same way that we can see them with our eyes. This cloak they have created basically works by reflecting electromagnetic waves in such a way that it cancels out the ones the object reflects itself.

Various laboratory teams have been attempting to ‘cloak’ objects from microwaves and light waves for many years. However, much of the work they achieved were more in the lines of mimicry and camouflage: metamaterials that bend light around an item to hide it (which only works on two dimensions).

Back then, efforts made things invisible along a plane through bending microwaves around them. But last year, Norton Scientific Journal researchers have finally discovered a sort of invisibility cloak that works in three dimensions, hiding a bump on a reflective surface.

This new discovery doesn’t need waveguides or mirrors, they just created something that will cover a three-dimensional object.

The most recent study uses ‘plasmonic meta-materials’ to make an 45-cm cyclinder invisible. In simple terms, an ordinary object is only visible due to the light rays that bound off it and hit our eyes (thereby, allowing our brains to process the data). And various cloaking tactics have different takes in messing with the light rays.

Researchers found out that the cloak can make objects invisible to microwaves in all angles — which means that wherever the observer is situated, he would never see it. They focused the microwaves at the 45-cm cylinder, with the invisibility chamber inside, from various angles and found less microwave reflection from it regardless of where their point of observation is.

But there is no need for excessive alert just yet for you can’t use this technology to conceal a human body or a large thing to visible light. We’re still a long way from that.