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A US-British team of scientists has successfully tested a cloak of invisibility in the laboratory.
The device mostly hid a small copper cylinder from microwaves in tests at Duke University, North Carolina.
It works by deflecting the microwaves around the object and restoring them on the other side, as if they had passed through empty space.
But making an object vanish before a person's eyes is still the stuff of science fiction - for now.
The cloak consists of 10 fibreglass rings covered with copper elements. This is classed as a "metamaterial" - an artificial composite that can be engineered to produce a desired change in the direction of electromagnetic waves.
The precise variations in the shape of copper elements patterned on to the ring surfaces determines their properties.
Like light waves, microwaves bounce off objects making them visible and creating a shadow, though at microwave frequencies the detection has to be made by instruments rather than the naked eye.
The metamaterial cloak channelled the microwaves around the object like water in a river flowing around a smooth rock. The microwave frequency was about 8GHz - in the same range as radar.
The device mostly hid a small copper cylinder from microwaves in tests at Duke University, North Carolina.
It works by deflecting the microwaves around the object and restoring them on the other side, as if they had passed through empty space.
But making an object vanish before a person's eyes is still the stuff of science fiction - for now.
The cloak consists of 10 fibreglass rings covered with copper elements. This is classed as a "metamaterial" - an artificial composite that can be engineered to produce a desired change in the direction of electromagnetic waves.
The precise variations in the shape of copper elements patterned on to the ring surfaces determines their properties.
Like light waves, microwaves bounce off objects making them visible and creating a shadow, though at microwave frequencies the detection has to be made by instruments rather than the naked eye.
The metamaterial cloak channelled the microwaves around the object like water in a river flowing around a smooth rock. The microwave frequency was about 8GHz - in the same range as radar.
The researchers say that if an object can be hidden from microwaves, it can be hidden from radar - a possibility that will fascinate the military.
Call me cynical, but wouldn't the US military have this stuff up and running already if it was feasible? Or can we assume that they do have it up and running but it's not been disclosed?
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