ninakkida
22-03-2010, 08:23
An invisibility cloak that hid a layer of gold has been made by German scientists bringing Harry Potter's famous garment a step closer to being a reality.
http://i41.tinypic.com/b97z1j.jpg
Invisibility cloak: Harry Potter's sneaky garment could one day become a reality
However, before you get too excited, the layer of gold that was cloaked only measured a mere 0.00004 inches high and 0.0005 inches across.
That's so small that you'd need a magnifying glass to see it.
But the experiment, by researchers at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, was important for one reason in particular: it worked in three dimensions.
Previous attempts have only been conducted in two dimensions.
The researchers made the gold invisible by bending light around it, a bit like water flowing around a rock.
The hi-tech finding was reported in the online edition of the journal Science. Lead researcher Tolga Ergin told the Guardian: 'In principle, the cloak design is completely scalable; there is no limit to it.
'Invisibility cloaks are a beautiful and fascinating benchmark for the field of transformation optics, and it is very seldom that one can foretell what practical applications might arise out of a field of fundamental research.
'But we have made a first step in producing 3-D structures in that field.'
The progress Ergin's team have made was acknowledged by Professor Ortwin Hess from the University of Surrey, who described his fellow scientist's work as a 'huge step forward'.
He added: 'The really remarkable aspect is the demonstration of invisibility in three dimensions.'
by Ted Thornhill
http://i41.tinypic.com/b97z1j.jpg
Invisibility cloak: Harry Potter's sneaky garment could one day become a reality
However, before you get too excited, the layer of gold that was cloaked only measured a mere 0.00004 inches high and 0.0005 inches across.
That's so small that you'd need a magnifying glass to see it.
But the experiment, by researchers at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, was important for one reason in particular: it worked in three dimensions.
Previous attempts have only been conducted in two dimensions.
The researchers made the gold invisible by bending light around it, a bit like water flowing around a rock.
The hi-tech finding was reported in the online edition of the journal Science. Lead researcher Tolga Ergin told the Guardian: 'In principle, the cloak design is completely scalable; there is no limit to it.
'Invisibility cloaks are a beautiful and fascinating benchmark for the field of transformation optics, and it is very seldom that one can foretell what practical applications might arise out of a field of fundamental research.
'But we have made a first step in producing 3-D structures in that field.'
The progress Ergin's team have made was acknowledged by Professor Ortwin Hess from the University of Surrey, who described his fellow scientist's work as a 'huge step forward'.
He added: 'The really remarkable aspect is the demonstration of invisibility in three dimensions.'
by Ted Thornhill