Have you ever wanted to turn invisible? Maybe to hide from someone you’re avoiding, or because you’re planning the jewel heist of the century? Characters with this superpower have been around for thousands of years: Hades, the Greek god of the underworld, had a magical helmet that rendered him invisible, H.G. Wells wrote a famous story about a scientist who finds an invisibility formula, and Bilbo Baggins’ magic ring lets him travel unseen in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Harry Potter has an invisibility cloak—so why can’t I have one?

 

The answer is, I could—but it wouldn’t make me invisible to other people’s eyes (yet). The way our vision works is that when light waves bounce off objects, the reflection of those waves is what makes an object visible. We can use mirrors to re-direct those waves (like magicians do in stage shows to make things “disappear”) but we haven’t found a substance that will just absorb or neutralize all those light rays, making it truly invisible.  

 

BUT!  Scientists at the University of Texas have recently developed something called a “mantle cloak.” This is a flexible material than can be wrapped around an object, and it completely neutralizes microwaves! No, not the kitchen appliances—tiny electromagnetic waves outside the visible spectrum. The mantle cloak effectively renders whatever it’s wrapped around invisible to microwaves. Not too useful for your jewel heist plans, but it opens the door to the possibility that someday this technology could be expanded to include visible light—making Harry Potter’s magic invisibility cloak into a real-life scientific marvel!