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British and German researchers say they can hide 3D objects by bending light
waves, reports the Daily Telegraph.
Researchers from the German Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Imperial
College London used photonic crystals to conceal a small bump on a gold
surface.
Invisibility cloaks have already been developed but they only worked on two
dimensions.
In other words, the objects that were supposed to be made invisible were
immediately visible from the third dimension, the study said.
The 'cloak' invented by the European team is the first to work on three
dimensions.
"For now these cloaking devices are just a beautiful and exciting benchmark
to show what transformation optics can do," said Tolga Ergin, who led the
research.
"This is very exciting, because mankind has always thought about being
invisible or having invisibility cloaks. This is the first proof of
principle. It shows that the technique works."
Mr Ergin warned that it would be years before anything as large as a person,
car or tank could be made to disappear with this technique.
"It is really hard to say what the future will bring, but the field is
definitely very broad and the possibilities are very large," he said.
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