Whether its the powers of invisible woman in fantastic four
or the invisibility cloak in harry potter we have all at one point dreamt about
having the power to somehow be invisible, who wouldn’t want to snoop around
without the fear of being seen? If you are one such person then science has
good news for you, invisibility cloaks are now a reality. Researchers at
university of Rochester have made a cloaking device that works in three
dimensions using no specialized equipment but only four standard lenses.
Professor John Howell
along with a graduate student Joseph Choi have developed the “Rochester Cloak”
by using the basic idea of manipulation of light waves, forcing them around an
object and obscuring it from the view. This is done by combining four standard optical lenses in a way
that keeps the object hidden, even as the viewer moves side to side. "This is the first device that we
know of that can do three-dimensional, continuously multi-directional cloaking,
which works for transmitting rays in the visible spectrum," Choi said.
the Rochester cloak array, showing how the light bends |
Unlike the previous cloaking devices this one partially
solves the problem of viewpoint, leaving the background undisturbed,
undistorted and without any sort of warping. The lenses are placed at such a
distance from each other that forces light to act in the desired way. First,
one lens focuses the light into one fine point on the second lens, the second
lens does the same for the third lens and so on. Giving the result that the object
in the ring shaped array of light is hidden from the view.
However at the moment the setup is not perfect. “This cloak bends light and sends it
through the center of the device, so the on-axis region cannot be blocked or
cloaked,” said Choi. This means that the cloak region is shaped like a doughnut.
But Howell and Choi have already started working on more complicated versions
to solve this problem.
Although this cloaking device is far from perfect but it is
still a step in the right direction and in a decade or so we maybe witnessing
the invention of invisibility cloaks that we have seen only in sci-fi movies
yet.
Aside from spying and intelligence purposes Choi and Howell
have other uses in mind for the invisibility cloak like allowing a surgeon to
operate on a patient without having the view hidden by their own hands or
allowing truck drivers to see through blind spots. The possibilities are
endless.
Because of the fact that this whole setup is pretty simple,
this can be accomplished at home as well. Anyone can get a bunch of lenses and
give it a try and for this purpose Choi and Howell have published a tutorial
for an at-home do-it-yourself cloaking device. If you want to give it a go then
click
here.
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