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Top 10 science stories of 2008 -- #2: pushing invisibility's limits
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An invisibility cloak in action. Creidt Warner Bros.
In celebration of the approaching New Year, I present a list of the top ten science stories of 2008. Taken from the vast expanse of all fields of science, they may not be everyone's top ten, but they are among the top news makers and will have repercussions well past the ending days of 2008.
In 2006, a group of engineers made an amazing announcement: they knew how to make an invisibility cloak. Since then, lab across the world have been racing to assimilate this new technology, to unroll a new wave of invisibility cloaks (a concept once again made popular by the likes of Harry Potter).
This technology is a complicated bit of science. Researchers are creating something that does not exist in nature, giving it the title of "metamaterial." These metamaterials are formed in rings that surround the item to be concealed. Because of the cylinder-like structure of the metamaterial, incoming waves of light are pushed around the hidden object before meeting up again on the other side, looking for all the world like they had never been disturbed.
2008 has brought a new aspect to the invisible playing field: protection from matter. The most amazing part of the project is that the invisibility technology not only hides objects from light, but from any form of wave, including sound. This means that a submarine covered in the material would theoretically be undetectable by sonar. But it extends even past that. Certain forms of matter, like electrons, also travel in waves. This means if a material could be built big enough, it would be able to protect against large scale natural disasters like tsunamis or mudslides.
This technology is a long way off from being created on such a grand scale, but the possibility is there—and being rapidly pursued by physicists everywhere, who are helping to turn this bit of science fiction into reality.
Check out the rest of the list here.
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