Harry Potter beware!  Hard though it may seem to believe, Austrian boffins believe they have developed a technique for projecting light waves right through solid material.

The “cloak” works by projecting a precise pattern onto a special material to match its inner pattern of irregularities, thereby allowing light waves to pass through without deflection. Under normal conditions, the special new material absorbs light and appears solid. But when it is activated it shines, and the way in which it shines can be controlled to allow incidental light to travel through it.

The whole process relies on being able to circumnavigate the inherent scattering of light as it encounters irregularities in a material.  Each material has its own intricate pattern of irregularities, and the Viennese researchers have developed a method to calculate the right pattern to “switch off” the resultant scattering. So far only tested in computer simulations, the next step is a practical experiment. We can’t wait to not see the results….

Sources:

1. Nature.com:
   Wave propagation through disordered media without backscattering and intensity variations.

2. NewAtlas:
   Light wave technology cloaks opaque materials.