An invisibility cloak may sound like something from Harry Potter, where our good old lad uses it to move around the school, unseen by anybody (Dumbledore is an exception).

While browsing some news today, I came across a news stating that the researchers in London were today given the go-ahead for a £4.9 million project to create a real invisibility suit.

They hope to create a cloak from a new material that can manipulate light. Normally, when light hits an object, it bounces off the surface and into the eye, making the object visible. The invisibility cloak made from ‘meta-material‘ would work by ‘grabbing hold’ of light waves and making them flow smoothly around an object, in the same way that water in a river flows round a stick.

My best wishes to the leader of the project – Sir John Pendry and hats off to the Leverhulme Trust for funding it.

A photo of 'meta-material', which can deflect microwave beams so they flow around a 'hidden' object.