It's no secret that I'm an unapologetic Harry Potter fan. Ever since my daughter (now 19) was in second grade, we have been reading the series together. Every midnight book launch would find us standing in long lines at Barnes and Noble, waiting until we could get our hands on the next installment. Between the books and the movies, the world of Harry Potter grew before our eyes, introducing us to a magical world that was just plausible enough that we could almost believe it was real.
In the magical world, there were a few bits of magical technology that really captured my imagination, mainly the time turner and the invisibility cloak. Although I don't think that our current technology has the capability to create a necklace that allows the wearer to manipulate time and space, it seems that researchers have come up with something that is sort of close to Harry's cloak of invisibility.
Yes, you read that right - an invisibility cloak is in the works and the technology behind it is exciting. Although it's not time to go questing to unite the Hallows just yet, researchers at Duke have created a cloak that can hide an object from microwaves.
The technology has been a work in progress since Duke unveiled the first prototype of the invisibility cloak back in 2006. The first cloak used meta materials to hide a small object from microwaves. Although it didn't hide the item from human view, the technology used to create it was the first step toward the eventual goal of complete cloaking.
The first version of the cloak wasn't perfect. Because of the way that the reflectors on the cloak reflected the light, there were small reflections of the actual object that prevented it from being completely hidden.
Six years later, the research is improving. According to a report at Forbes, the new version of the invisibility cloak now uses copper strips in addition to the meta materials in order to split light into two waves that travel around an object in the center and re-emerge as a single wave. The copper strips served to shield the object from incoming light in order to lessen the problems with reflections. Another change is that the new cloak doesn't divide images into quadrants like the previous version did. When the image was divided, there were more blind spots and corners to contend with.
Although the goal of cloaking an object from the human eye is still a long ways off, there is still a huge demand for technology that can effectively cloak things from cameras, microwaves and radar. In fact, just last year an international team built a cloaking device that hides objects from view, but it only worked on an item smaller than a red blood cell.
In addition to cloaking items from view, researchers have managed to create a prototype of a device that can hide items in time. By using time lenses, the researchers were able to hide an event in time for just a couple of nano-seconds, but it's certainly new and promising research.
Believe it or not, the marketplace for this type of research is wide open. In fact, a company called Fractal Technologies says that they have perfected the microwave invisibility cloak as well and have a patent to prove it. The patent, which was granted in August of 2012, protects their cloak, and the company claims that their technology can make an entire person disappear. In addition to the cloak, they say that they are working on a Star Wars-like deflector shield that can divert electromagnetic radiation around an object, making it invisible to microwaves.
While all of this new technology is exciting, they all have huge flaws that make them not quite ready for real world use just yet. Both the cloak from the researchers at Duke and the one created by Fractal Technologies are only able to hide things that are completely stationary. If you move just a fraction of a centimeter in any direction or the angle changes, even slightly, the entire thing stops working. In order to actually make something invisible to microwaves, both the object and the viewer have to be in perfect alignment.
It's interesting to see how technology is advancing into the world of science fiction and fantasy. Who knows, maybe one day we will all be able to be invisible whenever we want. Now, all we need is a magic wand that wins every duel and a rock that brings back the dead and we'll be all set.
What do you think about this future tech? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Image Source: WBShop
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