"Cloaking Breakthrough
New materials are on the U.S. Department of Defense’s radar.
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Blue cloaking "metamaterial" is able to bend light around an object (orange circle), ensuring it casts no shadow or reflection. (Credit: D. Schurig, Duke University.) Ever since H. G. Wells published The Invisible Man more than a century ago, the prospect of invisibility -- or cloaking -- has been a mainstay of science fiction. But now physicists say they have finally figured out how to make objects invisible, and what’s more, they are just months away from putting this theory into practice.