Invisibility: Now available

The idea of invisibility has always intrigued people from the Invisible Man to stealth airplanes. Now, there's a new cloaking material that can actually hide objects.

Two independent groups have now achieved this feat [of invisibility], by building transparent 'carpet cloaks', made from calcite crystals, that lie over the object to be hidden.

Carpet cloaks render covered objects invisible by bending light rays as they enter the cloak and then when they exit it -- after they have bounced off the hidden object. The light is deviated in such a way that the rays seem to have been reflected directly from the ground underneath the object -- as though the object was not there.

Seems that special crystals can bend the light rays to hide the object.

That's pretty neat.