Here’s How A Real Life Invisibility Cloak Actually Works

Two things happen when light (from any wavelength) is shined on an object: The object reflects and bounces the light back to your eyes, making it visible, or it absorbs the light and shrouds the thing but leaves a shadow. In either case, the object doesn’t appear to be transparent. The goal of cloaking technology is to bend light around an object so that anyone looking at it from any direction or angle will only see what’s behind it, effectively rendering it transparent and invisible to the eye.

Hyperstealth Biotechnology Corporation is a company based in Canada known for providing a wide assortment of camouflage gear to armies worldwide. In October 2019, it filed four patents associated with a new material called “Quantum Stealth.” This cheap, flexible metamaterial not only bends light around a target in the visible spectrum but also bends ultraviolet, infrared, and shortwave infrared light while simultaneously blocking the object’s (or person’s) thermal signature and its shadow. Moreover, this broadband cloaking technology doesn’t need a power source and can work “in any environment, in any season at any time of the day or night.”

The thin metamaterial is made from a slightly offset pair of lenticular lenses, causing a “Negative Refractive Index.” It’s the use of back-to-back lenticular lenses that creates the effect. Using only one would simply blur the background image and fool no one. A lenticular lens is basically a ridged sheet made up of rows of convex (outward-curving) lenses. Quantum Stealth “magically” bends the light and shows background details but also creates a “dead spot” directly behind the material for an object to hide, leaving people blind to the illusion.