A research team from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) says it has demonstrated a cloaking device that could make curved surfaces look flat.
Though it is not quite as impressive as the magical cloak seen in Harry Potter, it is a big step towards something that could possibly be used in similar ways.
The team used new nancomposite material, invented by the university, which makes protruding areas "appear flat to electromagnetic waves".
Essentially they covered the surface of an object with this materiel and it cloaked the curved part by allowing electromagnetic waves to pass through the object without scattering.
Co-author, Professor Yang Hao from QMUL’s School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, said: “The design is based upon transformation optics, a concept behind the idea of the invisibility cloak.
“Previous research has shown this technique working at one frequency. However, we can demonstrate that it works at a greater range of frequencies making it more useful for other engineering applications, such as nano-antennas and the aerospace industry.”
The technology is still in the earliest stages of development but the project's lead researcher, Dr. Luigi La Spada, said that examining the ways electromagnetic waves interact with this material can could have a number of potential uses.
"Perhaps most importantly, the approach used can be applied to other physical phenomena that are described by wave equations, such as acoustics. For this reason, we believe that this work has a great industrial impact."
So we'll have to just sit tight for a while for that Harry Potter style cloak.
