Ever since Harry Potter and his unique scar burst upon the scene back in the late 1990s, people hav wondered if invisibility cloak technology could actually exist. It seems simply on paper. All you have to do is, uh, bend the light around you or, uh, something? I mean, chameleons sort of do it and everyone knows that human beings are great at adopting the abilities of animals! Wait, that’s just Spider-Man. In any event, scientists have been making great strides in making this technology exist in the real world, as scary as that sounds for you privacy lovers out here. Here is another advancement that may soon have you covered in a cloak while sneaking around your sister’s bedroom looking for her diary.
A physicist named Andrea Alu from the University of Texas at Austin has an idea for creating real life invisibility cloaks. Her idea? Make these cloaks out of electronically active materials. Alu proposed a design that starts with the standard metamaterials but adds CMOS negative impedance converters (NICs) at the corners of the cloak. Of course, these negative impedance converters are at the extreme cutting edge of technology so there isn’t many studies that relate their merits or lack thereof.
Speaking of extreme cutting edge tech, don’t be expecting invisibility cloaks to start popping up in your local costume shop. This tech needs some more fine tuning and it will probably be a few years before we can become momentarily invisible. In the meantime, maybe pop a couple of eye holes in a sheet and pretend you are a ghost.
