That invisibility cloak Harry Potter throws around himself to hide in plain sight soon may be fact, rather than fiction. Researchers at the University of Texas in Austin have demonstrated one — sort of. The researchers hid an 18 cm cylindrical tube from microwaves by putting it in a shell of plasmonic metamaterial. Metamaterials are artificial materials engineered to have properties that may not occur in nature. Plasmonic metamaterials are negative index metamaterials, meaning they are, in essence, invisible at a certain frequency range.
One afternoon in 2005 I was driving south between Austin and San Marcos, Tx on Interstate 35 and saw the reflection of an airplane in the distance in front of me. As I continued driving I would see it intermittently. It was flying slower than I (70 mph) off to the side of the highway about a hundred feet high, and as I slowly caught up with it it I could sometimes see its outline but only when it turned slightly. I realized that it was smaller than a conventional airplane, maybe 10' long, and that it was almost invisible! It had to be a remotely operated drone. I mentioned this to a friend who is a US Air Force pilot and he just changed the subject!
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Scientists Close In on Invisibility Cloak
Posted by: Richard Adhikari January 27, 2012 05:00 AMThat invisibility cloak Harry Potter throws around himself to hide in plain sight soon may be fact, rather than fiction. Researchers at the University of Texas in Austin have demonstrated one — sort of. The researchers hid an 18 cm cylindrical tube from microwaves by putting it in a shell of plasmonic metamaterial. Metamaterials are artificial materials engineered to have properties that may not occur in nature. Plasmonic metamaterials are negative index metamaterials, meaning they are, in essence, invisible at a certain frequency range.