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Invisibility cloaks are taking baby steps from science fiction to science fact. But there's an even stranger and more incredible possibility - an invisibility cloak that works in both space and time, shielding whole events from history itself. More »
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Invisibility cloaks took a step from science fiction to science fact this past weekend. A team of German scientists announced the construction of the first material that renders objects invisible in three dimensions. More »
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Cat's eyes look creepy because, at certain sudden angles, they reflect light directly back at you, the viewer. The ever-popular question of invisibility is wrapped up in that ability to reflect light at certain directions, commonly known as the refractive index. This week, two physicists from the UK and the Czech Republic published their method for designing optical singularities — in other words, refractive indices of either zero or infinity that could produce the wildest optical illusions we've ever seen. And that's just one of the ideas presented in the latest open-access issue of the New Journal of Physics on cloaking and transformation optics. More »
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