In the last decade or so, invisibility cloaks have captured the imagination of researchers and the public alike. The excitement is based on two advances.
The first is the idea of "transformation optics," or the ability to bend light around a region of space to make it look as if it weren't there. The second is the creation of metamaterials — synthetic substances with optical properties unknown in nature that can be designed to achieve this goal.
One of the goals in this area is to create a Harry Potter-style cloak capable of hiding human at all optical frequencies in all directions. A bonus would be the ability to make this device as big or small as required so that it can hide objects of any size — even ones as large as orbiting satellites, according to U.S. researchers.
Achieving all these features in a single gadget is currently impossible. The first cloak worked only at a single microwave frequency. More recent cloaks operate over
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