Complete story at the link.
…
Here’s how to make an invisibility cloak
Theoretical cloaking device could soon become reality (sort of)
Researchers say they are rapidly closing in on new types of materials that can throw a cloak of invisibility around objects, fulfilling a fantasy that is as old as ancient myths and as young as “Star Trek” and the Harry Potter novels.
Unlike those tales of fictional invisibility, the real-life technologies usually have a catch. Nevertheless, limited forms of invisibility might be available to the military sooner than you think.
“We’re very confident that at radar frequencies, these materials can be implemented on a time scale of 18 months or so,” John Pendry of Imperial College London told MSNBC.com
Pendry’s research team is one of two groups whose results were posted Thursday on the journal Science’s Web site in advance of print publication. The two papers lay out different theoretical methods for creating invisibility, not only for radar but potentially for optical wavelengths as well.
Still more teams are out there with ideas to make things invisible — using methods ranging from superlenses that cancel out the light from nearby objects to actual cloaks onto which video can be projected as a moving camouflage. The most exotic technologies involve “metamaterials,” blends of polymers and tiny coils or wires that twist the paths of electromagnetic radiation.
“There are recipes for controlling metamaterials,” explained University of Pennsylvania electrical engineer Nader Engheta, who published his own invisibility recipe last year. “Metamaterials are very interesting products.”
