If they just have created the first `cloaking device`….. than what fuck is that 'invisibility cloak' for military vehicles that was created by BAE system?!
Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak gets a step closer: Researchers reveal first ‘perfect’ cloaking device
- Diamond shaped gadget can render a centimetre cylinder invisible to microwaves
- First to ‘perfectly’ cloak an object with no distortion at sides
It has long been the dream of both scientists and Harry Potter fans, but researchers at Duke University have revealed a new version of a real-life invisibility cloak.
The team, which first showed off a prototype in 2006, believe the latest version is the best ever made.
It allowed the team to ‘cloak’ an object perfectly for the first time, rendering a centimetre-scale cylinder invisible to microwaves.
Several teams around the world are working on technologies to make the technology made famous by Harry Potter a reality, but have struggles to not reflected some of the light, making the illusion incomplete.
A Nature Materials study has now shown how to pull off the trick flawlessly using a diamond shaped cloak.
However, the technique is not quite ready for a real-life Harry potter cloak – the illusion only works from one direction and the team admits it would be difficult to achieve with visible light.
The first functional ‘cloaking’ device was reported by Duke University electrical engineers in 2006 worked like a charm, but it wasn’t perfect.
Now a member of that laboratory has developed a new design that ties up one of the major problems with the original device.
The Duke team has extensive experience in creating ‘meta-materials,’ man-made objects that have properties often absent in natural ones.
Structures incorporating meta-materials can be designed to guide electromagnetic waves around an object, only to have them emerge on the other side as if they had passed through an empty volume of space, thereby cloaking the object.
Duke University researchers Nathan Landy with the new cloaking device, which is the first to perfectly cloak an object.‘In order to create the first cloaks, many approximations had to be made in order to fabricate the intricate meta-materials used in the device,’ said Nathan Landy, a graduate student working on the project.