You’ve probably thought at least once in your lifetime “I wish I could become invisible right this very second!”. Don’t be shy, we all thought about it and the endless possibilities that would open up if you actually had the power to become invisible. Everyone who read and watched the Harry Potter series is familiar with the Invisibility Cloak Harry and his friends wore around to fight the bad guys or sneak into the places they weren’t allowed to visit. So, what if we told you that a team of scientists at the University of Rochester in New York managed to produce a cheap version of the invisibility cloak? Yeah, we wouldn’t believe it either, but with today’s technology advancements, our guess is that anything’s possible.
Photo: Rochester University
Using readily available materials and a lot of clever thinking, the team learned that anything can disappear from view if it passes behind a certain line of sight, with the help of various optical lenses. The ‘Rochester Cloak’ (as it’s being called) uses a simplified four-lens system that basically bends light around objects you put in the middle of the chain. This means that you can see the area in the background normally, but not the item in the foreground. Its inventors say that the ‘Rochester Cloak’ can be scaled up using any size of lens.
One of the team members, doctoral student Joseph Choi, said to Reuters: “From what we know this is the first cloaking device that provides three-dimensional, continuously multidirectional cloaking. I imagine this could be used to cloak a trailer on the back of a semi-truck so the driver can see directly behind him. It can be used for surgery, in the military, in interior design, art.”
This cloaking system is not only simple, but inexpensive, too, and it can work at multiple angles while the object remains inside the series of lenses. Choi and Howell said that all of the materials and equipment cost them around $1000, but that the ‘Rochester Cloak’ could be created more cheaply. They even put together instructions on making a cloak on your own for less than $100, you can check it out here!
What do you think about this? 
