Harry Potter invisibility cloak a step closer to reality

john pendry

An invisibility cloak, like the one Harry Potter used to wander around Hogwarts unseen, may be a reality within five years, claim scientists...

Researchers at Purdue University in Indiana are using new ultra small 'nanotechnology' and 'metamaterials' combined with the mathematical principles of Einstein. 'One of the most exciting applications is an electromagnetic cloak that could bend light around itself, similar to the flow of water around a stone, making invisible both the cloak and an object hidden inside,' said Professor Vladminr Shalaev, lead researcher who published his work in Science...The experiments are a development of work by Sir John Pendry [Physics] at the Imperial College, London, who originally outlined how metamaterials could be constructed to cloak objects by deflecting and cloaking objects.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/10/16/scicloak116.xml

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