Let’s face it, who wouldn’t want an invisibility cloak? When you’re invisible that last chocolate biscuit left on the table is yours, provided you don’t trip over the cat and give your position away in the process.

While a full sized invisibility cloak is still science fiction, research into metamaterials have potentially brought us a little closer to bending light to achieve invisibility cloaking.

Professor Yuri Kivshar, from the Research School of Physics and Engineering recently explored this idea at a public lecture for the Australian Academy of Science where he explained how invisibility could theoretically and even practically be achieved.

Basically the electromagnetic waves we can see–aka light, need to be bent around an object instead of being absorbed or reflected off an object like they normally do. Light bending happens whenever light passes through transparent objects like glass or water. The degree that an object causes light to bend is called the refractive index.

A new branch of physics, nanophotonics, is investigating the behaviours of light on the nanometer scale. With a greater understanding of how light works, scientists in this field are working on creating new materials with unique reflective indexes not exciting in natural materials. This causes the light to bend around objects so that they appear invisible. We call these new materials, metamaterials.

Metamaterials are still in their early stages and scientists are still working on making three-dimensional objects invisible. However if perfected the opportunities that invisibility presents will be out of sight.