Invisibility Cloak
Sunday, April 1, 2012
If you’re a Harry Potter fan, then you’re probably familiar with the concept of an invisibility cloak. This sort of thing tends to fly unquestioned on the grounds of Hogwarts. But what about in the real world? Well Muggles, Science has some good news for you - Invisibility Cloaks are a reality!
The development of invisibility cloaks are many years away from becoming a full-fledged one, but some researchers in Germany are working in a new field of physics known as ‘Transformation Optics’. Here, researchers create extremely small items from metal, to bend light from all distances and in many different directions so that it becomes invisible to the naked eye. Light travels along a single path from one point to another. But transformation optics bends light around objects, similar to water bending around a rock in a stream. German scientists say it would take a long time to completely HIDE an object, although such techniques could be developed in the future. Until now, cloaks have been developed to conceal objects in two dimensions, but they create a shadow that can be detected with instruments.
This two-dimensional cloaking is called Optical Camouflage. To merge a person/thing with one’s surroundings, the person has to put on a special ‘suit’. This complex suit is made up of millions of tiny beads. When light rays hit these beads, it is reflected back in the same direction. So an image of the background is projected onto the person wearing the suit, and due to reflection of light along the same path, the person appears invisible. However, if the observer were to move to the side and view the person, then he would see a normal person in a silver dress. This technique of achieving invisibility was successfully experimented in 2007.
But in January 2012, scientists in Texas made a breakthrough. The wavelength of light varies over a large scale, out of which only a small portion is visible to the naked human eye. One part of the light spectrum, known as microwaves, is not visible to the human eye. Scientists in Texas succeeded in cloaking a tube from this portion of the light spectrum. Light rays of this section of the spectrum simply pass through the object without any deviation! Now this has tremendous implications. A fighter plane cloaked in this manner could achieve complete invisibility to any sort of radar emitting microwaves, thus making it completely undetectable.
Two questions arise in this context. Isn’t this a big threat to the security of each country, and to world peace? Also, if one can make an object invisible to a particular spectrum of light, then how far is the time when objects can be made undetectable in the entire spectrum of light, including visible light? Soon we will succeed in creating this ultimate ‘invisibility cloak’, which will be undetectable by any living being or machine.
So all you fans of Harry Potter and even those who aren’t, an invisibility cloak is not merely a dream but indeed a reality in the near future. Nothing is impossible.
References:
www.howstuffworks.com
www.telegraph.co.uk
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