Scientists are one step closer to invisible 3-D cloaking device

Captain Kirk protected his Starfleet Enterprise by using the cloaking device, in the 70's Star Trek television show on during prime time, well now is not so very far down the road. The most recent invisibility cloaking devices are focusing on 3D objects in outer space and using plasmonic metamaterials.

Earlier research only involved theory and cloaking of 2D objects in their natural environment and depending on what direction the observer was looking from.

The most recent research has been all about using transformational-based metamaterials or inhomogenous man-made maetmaterials that have the ability to bend light around objects. Plasmonic metamaterials have the effect of taking light rays and reflecting them off of everyday material.

So when lights hits the object being cloaked, it causes the light to bounce off away from our eyes. Normally, when light hits an object it reflects and bounce off into our eye, then our eyes process that information.

When the invisible cloak scattered field and the object being cloaked interferes with normal light rays it causes invisiblity or a transparency when the object is viewed from every angle.

The research was printed, January 26, 2012, in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics.

The system aimed microwaves at the object to be "cloaked" and then mapping the light around the object and the scattered light field around it all. The invisible cloak did what it was supposed to do, make the object transparent when it was hit with 3.1 gigahertz and a moderately broad bandwith.

Previous research done at the Unversity of Texas, shows that the size or shape of the object does not matter. If it is a solid object it can be cloaked and made invisible.

The next step is trying to use the "cloaking device" to make light invisible. Cloaking it at the optical level and stopping it in the scattered field. In the future this may benefit biomedical and optical fields.