Cloaking: Not just in Startrek

Some physicists have worked out what it would take to make a cloaking device. The device would effect light to make it bend around an object so that you wouldn't be able to see the object. At present this is only possible for wavelengths longer than visible light. But, wait a few years and the bugs may get worked out.

Physicists have drawn up blueprints for a cloaking device that could, in theory, render objects invisible.

Light normally bounces off an object's surface making it visible to the human eye. But John Pendry and colleagues at Imperial College London, UK, have calculated that materials engineered to have abnormal optical properties, known as metamaterials, could make light pass around an object as so it appears as if it were not there at all.

Metamaterials are exotic composites made of electronic components such as wires and inductors that can be engineered to precisely control the way light travels through them.