The secret of invisibility
2006/05/29 Roa Zubia, Guillermo - Elhuyar Zientzia
How can an object become invisible? It is easy: from where you look, instead of the object, making you see the light that comes from behind the object. In the city a car will be invisible if looking at the car you see the other side of the car, as the sidewalk in front. Yes, but how can you do it? The answer is the theoretical physicists. The truth is that there are many ways and the last one has been proposed in the prestigious Imperial Colledge of London. The idea is to bend the rays of light; if the light coming from the car through the opposite sidewalk, instead of crashing against the car, surrounds it and continues straight to the other side, the spectator will see what is behind the car, the sidewalk, and not the. To do this, the rays of light must be led to your taste. According to London physicists, this could be done through metamaterials, materials with a negative refractive index. This means that they can divert light in any direction. Therefore, the invisibility of this material can be achieved by the introduction of this material on the outside of the object. It is a theoretical idea, but these metamaterials exist today, they have already been elaborated by engineers in the laboratory. For physicists, the same could be done with other waves, such as radio waves, and thus protect any object from those waves. It is a theoretical idea, but it can soon be carried out in the laboratory.
