Invisibility Cloak

Carlos A. Rodriguez

     There are things that people have always dreamt about. Like
being able to fly, cross the ocean, go to the moon, or become
invisible. The last one is the only one we haven't being able to
accomplish yet, but according to recent developements, we are getting
close.
    Recently, I read and article that said that invisibility cloaks
were first proposed in 2006, and since then, there have been a lot of
prototypes, but they were too expensive and were only able to work in
microscopic scale. Now a couple of groups of scientists, one of them
lead by Dr. Shuang Zhang are working in the developement of a cloak
that is capable of hiding objects of a couple of centimeters. This
transparent cloak is easier to work with and cheaper cause is made of
some reflective material called calcite crystals. I didn't know that
there were such a material capable of reflecting the light efficiently
enough to cover an object and make it invisible, and now scientist and
engineers are working to exploit this technology until they can apply
it to larger objects. The way it works is because "calcite" is capable
of bending incoming rays of light depending on the crystal
orientation, so by sticking to pieces of crystal together they can
reflect incoming and outgoing light by the amount they desire. This
cloak bends the light rays in such a way that they seem to have been
reflected by the ground beneath the object, as if the object wasnt
there.
     It's so interesting to see how scientists keep discovering new
properties of materials and use them to achieve things that we never
thought possible. Invisibility is at the grasp of our fingers and this
technology keeps evolving using simpler materials and methods than its
predecesors which were made out of "intricately fabricated silicon
microstructures" and were too expensive to use in a larger scale. This
technology will be very useful especially for the military so that
they can develop new stealth suit and things like that. Now lets hope
these new discoveries are used in a right way and we can all benefit
from it.