Time to Disappear
I'm pretty sure we've all wanted our own invisibility cloak at one point or another. They've appeared in films and book for years and have always been a subject of "what if?" Well in this search for near invisibility a team of scientists at UC Berkeley in conjunction with Cornell have created a material that when laid over an object, the obvious bump that would protrude disappears almost completely, leading to a, visually, invisible object.
As awesome as this sounds, there are quite a few limitations still in existence. First of all the fabric will only reflect light in the infrared spectrum and it DOES leave a bump behind, but luckily it's only about 3nm big and consequently invisible to the human eye. Lastly, a true invisibility cloak would cause the space it occupies to appear empty, while this fabric sort of acts as a 2D mirror, only being able to be laid on top of an object and reflect light instead of completely surrounding it.
Despite some of these drawbacks the team of scientists is confident that further advances, such as the ability to hide in the visual wavelength are right around the corner. The ability to hide 3D objects is not far from possible and as the team said, only a matter of fabrication. As far as the whole, Harry Potter cloak level of invisibility, it seems that will still remain fantasy for now.
-Conor Stenerson
posted by PWH @ 3:49 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
This seems like on of those things that in theory are great ideas, but once it's made, is a lot less useful then originally thought. What uses do you think a invisibility cloak would have in the real world and not just a lab?
-Nick Cline
Haha this is some interesting info. I don't know how useful an invisibility cloak would be (except for bragging rights). I almost can't believe scientists have actually thought about this and put time into it.
Crystal Cabral
In a way i hope this doesn't work because if objects can become invisible i feel some privacy may be being invaded in a way, and who knows what wacky people will make disappear and reappear at will. Interesting but seems like nothing we will have to consider for a long time. I think invisibility is best left for the movies.
Samantha DeBiasio
This is really hard to wrap my mind around. I often forget that you see the things you do in depth because of how light hits it. Like the other people commented, I really wonder why this might be useful besides studying how light and the human eye really works.
Emily Bell
I think that's awesome. As far as uses go, I'm sure the military would be pretty interested in developing this material. it's kind of hard to understand when you describe it, I wonder how well it really works.
Jane de Verges
I can't believe scientists are actually working on something like this. I wonder if this idea came up from the movie. What do you think this material is gonig to be used for? Do you think it will make it to the general public if successful? It doesnt seem to be very useful at this point. Good blog.
-Katie Cyr
Conor,
Just last week I was thinking of Tom and Jerry and their invisible ink and though: “That would be awesome!” I think once its developed the military would find various ways to use it. But for now, cloaking small objects would be ideal for college kids like us. My room can get pretty messy, especially doing crunch time when I have no time to do anything. With an invisible cloak I can put all my mess into a pile, cover it up and my room will look clean and I won’t feel so cluttered, so I can study better. Pretty good advertisement…
Sarah Bello
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