Invisibility cloaks could slim down with active approach
Light-blocking antennas could hide objects of any shape and size
A new light-canceling technique could help scientists make thin invisibility cloaks that block a large range of wavelengths.
The new technique is “a smart engineering trick” that is “quite different from the way cloaking has been approached so far,” says Andrea Alù, a physicist at the University of Texas at Austin.
Nearly all invisibility cloaks use light-manipulating compounds called metamaterials to bend light around an object, rendering the object transparent. Such technology has become increasingly sophisticated since it was introduced in 2006. But most metamaterial cloaks are still impractically bulky or limited to narrow wavelength ranges and physical configurations.