InvisibilityCloaks
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Magic Leap is experimenting with light-bending nanomaterials
Mixed reality company Magic Leap is cagey with its tech, to say the least. However, it has released a research paper in conjunction with Berkeley Lab that hints on what it's doing. The team developed new materials that can take in light from more angles than before and redirect it with minimal losses. That could aid not only its mixed reality (MR) headset, which reportedly uses wave-guiding tech similar to the Hololens, but spark breakthroughs in holograms, invisibility cloaks and more.
Scientists are developing an invisibility cloak for solar panels
Current solar panel technology has enough trouble as it is converting sunlight into useable current, what with their paltry 20 percent average efficiencies. And it certainly doesn't help matters that up to a tenth of every solar panel's active collection areas are obscured from the sun by electrical leads called "contact fingers." But researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have developed a novel workaround: they're wrapping the finger contacts in little invisibility cloaks.
Scientists use metal and silicon to create invisibility cloak (no, you can't wear it)
In the quest to achieve that much-desired invisibility cloak, scientists have redirected light, used heat monitoring and even gone underwater -- with varying degrees of success. The latest attempt at this optical illusion is from engineers at Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania, who have developed a device that can detect light without being seen itself. When the ratio of metal to silicon is just right, the light reflected from the two materials is completely canceled out. The process, called plasmonic cloaking, controls the flow of light to create optical and electronic functions while leaving nothing for the eye to see. Scientists envision this tech being used in cameras -- plasmonic cloaking could reduce blur by minimizing the cross-talk between pixels. Other applications include solar cells, sensors and solid-state lighting -- human usage is conspicuously absent on that list.
Quest for invisibility cloaks revisited by two research groups
After a brief period of no news, it's time to revisit the world of invisible cloaks. Inspired by the ideas of theoretical physicist John Pendry at Imperial College, London, two separate groups of researchers from Cornell University and UC Berkeley claim to have prototyped their own cloaking devices. Both work essentially the same way: the object is hidden by mirrors that look entirely flat thanks to tiny silicon nanopillars that steer reflected light in such a way to create the illusion. It gets a bit technical, sure, but hopefully from at least one of these projects we'll get a video presentation that's sure to make us downright giddy.
