The invention that will “change our lives.” With these words, Chu Junhao, director of the Faculty of Science at Donghua University in Shanghai and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, stunned the audience who attended the presentation of his latest project: an invisibility cloak. “In the future we will all have the Harry Potter cloak in our closets”, the 78-year-old scientist dared to say that his surprising invention, announced in a virtual event called “Super Night of Science,” went viral within hours. And that’s not surprising, considering the surprising video that shows his production.
As can be seen in the images, Junhao is accompanied by two assistants at his side, holding what appears to be a translucent sheet made of what appears to be a unique material. This panel shows her legs. However, when he asks his companions to turn him 90 degrees, the lower part of his body disappears, becoming invisible to the audience so that the background can be easily seen; This means that the area that the scientist could not previously see with his legs is visualized without anything in between. If you watch the video, cThis is how I was able to confirm that magic exists.
But not. Everything has to do with science and its interaction with humans.. This was explained by Junhao himself after a real demonstration. The key to it all obviously lies in the composition of this sheet: it features a lenticular grid made up of a series of small convex cylindrical lenses that allow light to refract evenly. That is, metamaterials have been used to alter the human eye’s perception of the projection of light onto objects, thus “distorting” our field of vision to make us believe it has disappeared.
This is how the scientist, whose statements were reported by the newspaper El Mundo, explained it: “Any vertical lens can shrink and make objects thinner parallel to it so that the light can refract. When a series of convex cylindrical lenses form a grid, multiple images are formed that are too small to be perceived by the eyes, thereby achieving an invisibility effect.” Junhao further believes that “with the gradual maturity of technology and metamaterials, the imagination of the Invisibility grows in science fiction works come true.”
The race to meet the challenge of “invisibility” is not new. Numerous powers have been working for years on devices and mechanisms that can not only mock their presence in front of other people; also in view of complex security systems that could soon become obsolete due to the development of such technologies. The aim is not only to reach unimagined limits, but also to further strengthen the systems mentioned above so that these inventions are no longer used for illegal purposes in the future.