It is not wizards creating real-life invisibility cloaks, but rather a group of students at Rice University in Texas who are conjuring up new ways of creating the camouflage made well known by the famous Harry Potter series. Inspired by squids and other sea creatures able to change their skin color quickly, the team of students has created a new, thin screen able to create high definition images with the same rich colors found on current high definition display systems. “Thinking with my little mischievous mind, there are a lot of pranks that I would want to do with (the invisibility cloaks.) I think in the world of pranks, it would find a better place. I think YouTube would definitely be viewed a lot more with people doing pranks like that,” said Christopher Anaya, a junior from Texas majoring in business management. These invisibility cloaks would help pranksters in their endeavors, but student McKenna Hawkins, an undecided freshman from Colorado believed the invisibility cloaks could be dangerous. “I think it’s awesome, but if it can hide cars it’s probably not a good thing.” She posited, “Maybe they could restrict it, like guns. If you’re not a criminal, you can get it.”The prankster, Anaya, also saw the invisibility cloaks’ potential beyond tomfoolery, saying the cloaks could be used “for military purposes. If you have to be hiding on a regular basis, then I think it would be good,” said Anaya.The invisibility cloaks are made of a display system that senses adjustments in light and modifies itself accordingly. On its own, this new display system leads to technological advances creating television and computer screens that are very sharp and long lasting. The invisibility technology of these screens is being paired with other materials produced by the team at Rice University to create these invisibility cloaks.According the Rice University News site, the technology uses five-micron-square pixels (about 0.000197 inches, about 40 times smaller than the pixels in high definition LCD screens) made of several hundred aluminum nanorods. Colors are made by manipulating the length of the nanorods and the distance between them to create the same shades of red, green and blue found in HD displays. Aluminum was chosen because of its compatibility with microelectronic production methods.Rice University’s invisibility cloak technology is a new idea different from other cloak technology, says Engadget, a tech news site. Other technology bends the light around the cloak. These types of cloaks are easier to produce, however scientists have only discovered how to make materials completely invisible to microwaves, which are already invisible to the human eye, leaving the material still visible to us. While an actual metamaterial making people or vehicles invisible is still far out in the future, this new squid-inspired discovery suggests that disguises for combatants and vehicles is actually possible, and that Hogwarts may not be that far-fetched after all.uploaded Jan. 23, 2015
Writer: Camron Stockford
