CHICAGO (Reuters) - A new light-bending material has brought scientists one step closer to creating a cloaking device that could hide objects from sight.
Beyond possible military applications, it also might have a very practical use by making mobile communications clearer, they said on Thursday.
"Cloaking technology could be used to make obstacles that impede communications signals 'disappear,'" said David Smith of Duke University in North Carolina, who worked on the study published in the journal Science.
Smith was part of the same research team that in 2006 proved such a device was possible.
He said the new material is easier to make and has a far greater bandwidth. It is made from a so-called metamaterial -- an engineered, exotic substance with properties not seen in nature.
Metamaterials can be used to form a variety of "cloaking" structures that can bend electromagnetic waves such as light around an object, making it appear invisible.
In this case, the material is made from more than 10,000 individual pieces of fiberglass material arranged in parallel rows on a circuit board.
FULL ARTICLE:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-...Static-Vanish/