p2pnet.net OT News:- Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility seems close to becoming visible.

A blueprint for one such realized with “exotic artificial composite materials” called metamaterials was developed by researchers at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering and Imperial College, London, England.

“Such a cloak could hide any object so well that observers would be totally unaware of its presence, according to the researchers,” says Duke University News & Communications.

It, “would act like you’ve opened up a hole in space,” it has David R. Smith, Augustine Scholar and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke’s Pratt School saying.

“All light or other electromagnetic waves are swept around the area, guided by the metamaterial to emerge on the other side as if they had passed through an empty volume of space.”

Electromagnetic waves would flow around an object hidden inside the metamaterial cloak just as water in a river flows virtually undisturbed around a smooth rock, Smith said.

Now scientists, “have demonstrated a technology that could be a small step in the right misdirection,” says The New York Times. “The system, a set of concentric copper circles on fiberglass board, deflects electromagnetic waves of a specific frequency that strike it, without much of the scattering and absorption that make reflections and shadows.”

The exact structure of the circles was described by Sir John Pendry of Imperial College in London, “who worked with the Duke group to see his theory etched into a working model by means of the process used to print circuit boards,” says the story. In their recent paper, “researchers said they had successfully cloaked a copper cylinder.”

First demonstrated by Smith and colleagues in 2000, metamaterials can be made to interact with light or other electromagnetic waves in very precise ways, says Duke, adding, “Although the theoretical cloak now reported has yet to be created, the Duke researchers are on their way to producing metamaterials with suitable properties, Smith said.

The research team, also includes David Schurig of Duke’s Pratt School.

Not surprisingly, the work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Also See:
Duke University News & Communications - Theoretical Blueprint for Invisibility Cloak Reported, October 20, 2006
The New York Times - Scientists Take Step Toward Invisibility, October 20, 2006

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