Real Life Invisibility Cloak

I don't know about everyone else, but I have always dreamed of being able to be invisible. Growing up there was many instances of people on television or in books who had some sort of device or a power that could make them invisible. Once I even watched one of the worst movies ever made (it even looked bad when I read the blurb), about an invisible plane. However I thought, "what the hell, it's about an invisible plane, it can't be that bad!" It was! I also recall Rowan Atkinson did a stand-up comedy routine back in the 80's about an Invisible Man (it was a really funny routine) and more recently J.K Rowling wrote about Harry Potter, who he had an invisible cloak. So I know that the idea has not died and has in fact been thought of by many other people than myself (an not all of them have made terrible movies with no real plot or story line).

Today however, I discovered that my long time obsession with being invisible and things being made invisible came a step closer to reality, and that it could be potentially possible in my life time to become invisible! Today I read a story about a Professor from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Professor Baile Zhang, who earlier this month unveiled, to an amazed audience, a small box (it doesn't sound like much at this point, but wait for it). This box is made from calcite optical crystal (whatever that is), and has the ability to bend light around an object and make anything behind the box disappear! This is a remarkable discovery and although it is a long way into the future, this could be a step in the right direction for Professor Zhang, who admitted he invented the box, "just for fun", to then go on to create my invisibility cloak! So watch out people, sometime in my lifetime I might be sitting beside you and you would never know it (if you have never met me, the last statement would also be true, however in that instance you would at least know you were sitting beside someone, unlike if I was invisible).

Check out more about the invisibility cloak on the Daily Telegraph website.