Now in Fashion: Invisibility Cloaks

An invisibility cloak? That sounds like science fiction. Until now. Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin unveiled the results from an experiment in which they were able to conceal a three-dimensional object from microwaves by covering it with a plasmonic material that disguises light and makes the object invisible from all angles.  

While other researchers have successfully cloaked two-dimensional objects, this is apparently the first time scientists have made a three-dimensional object vanish. This advance has the potential to be very significant. For instance, cloaking could be used for high resolution microscopes as well as for more ambitious, scarier applications as well. The U.S. Department of Defense has been experimenting with making objects vanish for years. 

And yet, we are a long way off from hiding a tank or a warship, as opposed to hiding a tiny object for a few trillionths of a second. Or are we?

University of Minnesota physicist Jim Kakalios told Big Think “I am not going to bet against the cleverness of scientists and engineers coming up in the future.”

Watch the video here:

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

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