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Expecting to see people disappearing behind the invisibility cloak? Well, unless you see only electromagnetic waves at the microwave level, don’t keep your hopes up. Researchers at Duke University were able to redirect microwaves around a small copper cylinder. Microwaves were deflected around the object and restored on the other side as if they had passed through empty space. An analogy would be river water flowing past a smooth rock.

The metamaterial structure of the object is what deflects the electromagnetics waves. If we ever want to see this thing actually make something disappear in the likes of Harry Potter antics, we’d have to wait till nanotechnology matures in the next five to 10 years. The microstructure required to deflect optical radiation or visible light, is a few tens of nanometers across, i.e. currently too tiny to produce.

Experts create invisibility cloak [Via: BBC News]