Invisibility cloak isn’t new, but none of them has become a reality instead of being just a research prototype. And some more, most inviability cloaks that we’ve seen before based on the use of metamaterials that can make small objects invisible to a specific wavelength of light. But researchers from MIT, have developed the carpet cloak, which is more promising as it uses calcite crystals to make much larger objects disappear in the visible spectrum.
To make things invisible, two calcite crystals are glued together to form a little wedge of space underneath. So when an object is placed inside the wedge, it’ disappears. The picture shows a roll of pink paper that is placed inside the wedge and becomes invisible.
The calcite cloak was built with natural calcite crystals which cost a total of $1,000 and is able to make objects with max height of 2mm disappear. In order to hide much larger objects such as human, you need to scale up the crystals. And it’s better to use artificial crystals in order to keep the cost low. So, it sounds that the carpet cloak is little far from for practical use.
via dvice
February 4th, 2011 at 5:24 am
[...] placed under them are made to look invisible.The prisms are calcite and are created using just $1000. It is capable of hiding an object about 2mm in height although there's no reason that couldn't be [...]
February 10th, 2011 at 8:22 pm
Cool….
Very Good.