Innovation: Invisibility cloaks and how to use them

The "invisibility cloaks" being made in labs today can hide objects when viewed from a wide range of directions and in visible light – both considered implausible developments when the first working invisibility cloak was demonstrated just four years ago. But the technology that makes objects vanish looks set to be more useful for the safety of offshore structures and for unlocking cosmological secrets than for would-be Harry Potter impersonators.

In 2006, John Pendry's team at Imperial College London made the news with a design for a cloak that could steer light around an object to render it invisible. Within months a team led by David Smith of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, had built such a device using exotic "metamaterials" – materials with unusual electromagnetic properties that are not found in nature.

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"The flying saucers seem to have this cloaking ability. It may be no coincidence that high Tc superconducting meta-materials can be used both to stealth cloak and to generate low power zero g-force silent warp drive - if my intuition proves correct. So far, of course, I am merely guessing, brain-storming, or, perhaps, being a human time machine having precognitive remote viewing. Time will tell. The Fat Lady has not yet sung and The Crystal is not yet shattered. ;-)" -- Jack Sarfatti