Home
Science
Science News
Portable 'Invisibility Cloak' Invented by Researchers

Portable 'Invisibility Cloak' Invented by Researchers

By Indo-Asian News Service | Updated: 4 May 2015 17:14 IST

A group of German researchers has developed a Harry Potter-type portable invisibility cloak that can effectively shield objects while being small enough to use in classrooms.

The cloak works using diffused scattered light and like frosted window panes, it lets light in but hides the source of light.

By scattering light, the material slows down the propagation speed of light waves through the medium.

The light can then be sped up to make up for the longer path length around the hidden object.

"Our cloak takes advantage of the much lower effective propagation speed in light-scattering media," said Robert Schittny, from Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, who led the project.

The cloak cannot hide a human, but it can make small objects disappear from sight.

In the cloak, the object to be concealed is placed inside a hollow metal cylinder coated with acrylic paint, Daily Mail reported.

The tube is embedded within a block of polydimethylsiloxane, a commonly used organic polymer, doped with titanium dioxide nano-particles that make it scatter light.

If the time light takes to travel through the polydimethylsiloxane block is proportionate to the time it takes to travel through the cloak, the core will become invisible.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.