Cloaked in science: muggles hack invisibility wizardry

By ANNELIESE WILSON

This is it. The big one. The one we’ve all been waiting for.

Have scientists actually invented a possible invisibility cloak for the rest of us whose Hogwarts letter must have been lost in the mail?

If you didn’t get the interdepartmental memo, last year scientists revealed they could make an object seemingly invisible by using strategically placed lenses that could bend light waves.

While interesting, this elaborate set up of lenses and light-bending had as much “real-world” use as blast-ended skrewts.

But now, on microscopic levels and emerging from the Department of Mysteries (Berkeley), muggle scientists have created a tiny film only 80 nanometres thick that can interfere with the normal workings of light waves.

The tiny cloak is made from blocks of gold “nanoantenna” that act to reflect light in a certain way, leaving the object underneath seemingly invisible.

Previous advancements in the science of invisibility have been bulkier than the Fat Lady and exceedingly mechanical. But this is the first development that has the potential to be scaled up, or transformed to hide larger things (like wizards!).

So how does it work? Let me give you a brief insight into the Standard Book of Invisibility – Grade 1.

This new discovery acts to change the way light waves interact with objects in an environment.

Rather than light reflecting off an object to form an image in our eye, the cloak bends and redirects light around itself, essentially removing it from visible existence.

Unspeakables have created this miniscule cloak and covered it in different sized rectangles of gold in order for this process to work. This is the main advantage, as the skin-like material can now enclose an item, acting as a second skin, and cloak of invisibility.

This is different to previous attempts, which can now be likened to mere disillusionment charms, where the light was manipulated in order for it not to hit the object at play.

With no reflection of light, we have no visible imprint (or shadow) in another’s eye, which will finally allow us to leave the common room past 8pm.

However, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory director of the Materials Sciences Division Professor Xiang Zhang said it could take up to 10 years before we could face more than Moaning Myrtle hiding out in the girls bathrooms without our knowledge.

“We do not see fundamental roadblocks. But much more work needs to be done,” said Dr Zhang. Currently any movement by the object being hidden brings it into vision.

Scientists see this technology eventually being used for high-speed computers or cellular research.

But for the right amount of galleons maybe we now can all sneak into Hogsmeade for a butterbeer after class, or just avoid the taunts before a game of Quidditch!