Chinese Researchers Have Revealed A 'Ghost Cape'

The prototype 'ghost cloak' created by the team. It can distort light and make a ghost device, in the upper picture, appear as something else 

The 'Ghost Cape' That Could Make Fighter Jets Look Like Passenger Planes -- Daily Mail 

* Groundbreaking technology can make an object appear to be something else
* Technology could be used to make a jet fighter appear to be a passenger plane, or a soldier appear to be a tree
* Researchers say the technique is far simpler than current 'cloaking' devices

Chinese researchers have revealed a 'ghost cape' that can make one object appear to look like another.

The team from Southeast University in Nanjing, China say their technique is far simpler that other invisibility devices, because instead of making an object disappear entirely, it makes it look like something else.

The technique scatters incoming light to create two 'ghost' images either side of the cloaked object.

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My Comment: Until I see Chinese fighter jets looking like passenger jets .... I am deeply skeptical of this report.

New 'Broadband' Cloaking Technology Simple To Manufacture

This image shows the design of a new type of invisibility cloak that is simpler than previous designs and works for all colors of the visible spectrum, making it possible to cloak larger objects than before and possibly leading to practical applications in "transformation optics." (Credit: Purdue University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 21, 2009) — Researchers have created a new type of invisibility cloak that is simpler than previous designs and works for all colors of the visible spectrum, making it possible to cloak larger objects than before and possibly leading to practical applications in "transformation optics."

Whereas previous cloaking designs have used exotic "metamaterials," which require complex nanofabrication, the new design is a far simpler device based on a "tapered optical waveguide," said Vladimir Shalaev, Purdue University's Robert and Anne Burnett Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

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Chinese Devise Anti-Invisibility Cloak

From The Telegraph:

Only days after American scientists announced they have developed light warping materials suitable for invisibility cloaks, Chinese scientists have devised a way to peer under this cloak.

However, the good news for Harry Potter fans is that the anti -cloaking materials would have to be underneath the invisibility cloak to work. And they could help Harry Potter to improve his vision, as a bonus.

The recipe to undo invisibility comes from a study in the journal Optics Express by Dr Huanyang Chen of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.

He and his colleagues have proposed a theoretical "anti-cloak" that would partially cancel the effect of the invisibility cloak, which is another important problem as it turns out.

In recent years, several teams have shown that the mathematics of invisibility makes sense. In the past few weeks, a Californian team has also shown that it is possible to create the special synthetic "metamaterials" to make cloaking materials.

All materials scatter, bounce, absorb, reflect and otherwise alter light rays that strike them.

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