We all would love to have a cloaking device like the Romulans on Star Trek and now Electronic Engineers have taken the first step to developing one. “Andrea Alù and Nader Engheta of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia say that a ‘plasmonic cover’ could render objects “nearly invisible to an observer”. Their idea remains just a proposal at this stage, but it doesn’t obviously violate any laws of physics.”
The concept is an exciting one with many real world applications. “The key to the concept is to reduce light scattering. We see objects because light bounces off them; if this scattering of light could be prevented (and if the objects didn’t absorb any light) they would become invisible. Alù and Engheta’s plasmonic screen suppresses scattering by resonating in tune with the illuminating light.“
Read the entire article on Nature.com.