I've written about this twice before, once when researchers in Pennsylvania were discussing a "plasmonic cover", and once when a Russian Inventor filed a patent for an invisibility cloak. Today, I read on MSNBC about how scientists hid a copper cylinder from microwaves using a very similar device. Although in this test the cylinder was shielded from microwaves, the scientists say that the chances of adapting the technology to shield objects from visible light are good.
"The cloak reduces both an object's reflection and its shadow, either of which would enable its detection," said Smith.
In effect the device, made of metamaterials - engineered mixtures of metal and circuit board materials, which could include ceramic, Teflon or fiber composite materials - channels the microwaves around the object being hidden.
When water flows around a rock, Smith explained, the water recombines after it passes the rock and people looking at the water downstream would never know it had passed a rock. The cloaking has to be designed for specific bandwidths of radiation.
In this case it's microwaves, and someone measuring them wouldn't be able to tell they had passed around an object. The hope is to do the same for light waves.
Looking at a cloaked item, Smith explained: "One would see whatever is behind the cloak. That is, the cloak is, ideally, transparent. Since we do not have a perfect cloak at this point, there is some reflection and some shadow, meaning that the background would still be visible just darkened somewhat.
The ideal cloak would have nearly negligible reflection and virtually no shadowing, Smith said. "This first experiment has provided a confirmation that the mechanism of cloaking can be realized, we now just need to improve the performance of cloaking structures."
On one hand, this is very neat. On the other hand, thinking of the world we'd live in should this technology become more mainsteam is a bit frightening. Granted, I imagine that cloaking garments would be used almost exclusively by the military, but that's not necessarily comforting.