From sci-fi shielding devices to Harry Potter's invisibility cloak, methods of concealment have fascinated us lately. Scientists have been working toward developing a real-world application of this fantasy, and with their latest discovery, they've come closer than ever. The substance capable of making a real, visible object invisible is simply a form of calcium carbonate, and the key is its crystalline structure. Scientists at MIT and the University of Birmingham (U.K.) developed a technique in which two sheets of crystalline calcite with opposite crystal orientations are fused together. This arrangement causes light waves to refract in such a way that an object behind the crystals is completely invisible from the other side. Researchers were able to hide an object as large as a paperclip! Right now, the makeshift invisibility cloak is limited to two dimensions, however. Scientists are working on a way to expand this technology to larger, bulkier objects. They are encouraged by the fact that calcite crystals can be more than twelve feet long, giving a lot of potential for someday hiding large objects.
See: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-02/using-special-crystals-researchers-achieve-true-invisibility-visual-spectrum
Posted by Annie Harmon
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I wonder if this actually made it so someone looking at the paperclip literally couldn't tell that anything was there, or if it just bent the light in such a way that the paperclip couldn't be seen, but it was obvious there was something there bending the light in unusual directions
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