A Canadian company has developed a "quantum invisible" material. Harry Potter's "invisibility cloak" may not be far away

The Harry Potter series of novels and movies can be said to be the memories of a generation. In this vast magical world, J.K. Rowling created a variety of novel magic props, such as a flying broom, the Philosopher's Stone, the Elder Wand, the Mirror of Erised, etc., but the magic prop that impressed me the most is Harry Potter's "Invisibility Cloak".

At that time, I thought, if I could have an invisibility cloak, I would... (10,000 words omitted here).

Unfortunately, after waking up from the dream, the cloak disappeared with it.

However, the concept of "stealth" has not disappeared. In the military field, "air ghosts" such as stealth fighters have actually appeared for a long time.

However, this cannot be considered stealth in the strict sense, because the principle of stealth fighter is to reduce the detection effect of radar by using special structures or coatings, thereby achieving the effect of "invisibility" in the sky .

With the development of science and technology, various invisible materials have sprung up like mushrooms after rain. A while ago, according to Taiwan media reports, a Canadian camouflage company has developed a special material that can hide objects.

The material looks like a sheet of plastic and is very thin and light and can be bent.

The company calls this material Quantum Stealth. When light passes through the surface, the object behind the material will be refracted, creating a "dead angle" that hides the object behind. To the naked eye, the object seems to disappear from sight.

In addition to making objects disappear from sight, the material can effectively hide targets under detection under infrared, ultraviolet and thermal spectrums.

In this case, this invisible material should be put into use soon. However, "quantum invisibility" is not perfect, and the company is also very honest. They admit that current invisible materials still have shortcomings. For example, when the object to be hidden is too close or too far away from the material, it cannot achieve complete invisibility.

The principle of "quantum invisibility"

When the demonstration video of this invisible material was uploaded to YouTube, many people became interested in its magical invisibility function and bought various "invisible" items made of this material. Since its name is related to "quantum", some people explained that the principle of invisibility is because the surface of this material has a nano-scale coating made by the quantum tunneling effect.

It's true that everything is quantum mechanics... Even this company doesn't dare to say that. In fact, this is just an optical effect.

If you observe the microstructure of this material under a microscope, you will find that its surface is composed of rows of cylindrical stripes, which are arranged together to form a grating-like structure.

So why can structures like gratings achieve the effect of an invisibility cloak?

I first found the company's official website and checked it out. They explained that the principle of this invisible material is the same as looking at something through a plastic bottle. If the distance between the object being viewed and the bottle gradually increases, the object will begin to deform and the image will flip.

Damn! To put it bluntly, isn’t this the principle of a magnifying glass?

When we look at an object through a magnifying glass, the object will become larger and larger as the distance increases, but when the distance > 2f (2 times the focal length), the object will be inverted and gradually become smaller.

However, the surface of this invisible material is not a double convex lens like a magnifying glass, but a cylindrical plano-convex lens.

If an object is parallel to the lens, the object will become smaller horizontally as the distance increases, but it will not change vertically (it will not become shorter).

If an object is perpendicular to this convex lens, then as the distance increases, the object will become smaller and smaller in the horizontal direction, while there will be no change in the vertical direction.

Based on this principle, if more convex lenses are copied from this cylindrical lens and then placed side by side, it will become a grating.

At this time, when we look at the object parallel to this grating, we will find that it seems to have disappeared, but in fact it has not. It is just because the effect of the convex lens makes the object thinner and it happens to be stuck in the "blind spot" between the two convex lenses, causing people to selectively ignore it.

Therefore, when using this invisible material, it is important to note that the hidden object must be parallel to the material in order to achieve the desired effect.

In fact, most people have come into contact with this magical "invisible material". It is the 3D cards we played with when we were children. You can see different pictures by just rotating certain angles.

The principle of 3D cards is to use the convex lens on the surface to independently magnify the different patterns behind. As the angle changes, you will find that some pictures are more prominent .

If we scratch off the pattern on the back, we can get a cool invisible card.

Of course, such an invisible card can only be said to have achieved the effect in principle, but it is still far from the "quantum invisibility" developed by the Canadian company, because this can only be regarded as their first version, and now they have updated to the fourteenth version.

Finally, I would like to propose an immature idea. If the problem of being exposed due to being too close or too far cannot be solved at present, perhaps the company can consider making an "invisibility cloak" in the shape of a pendulum. After fixing the distance, extend a control rod from the top. When a person stands inside, the control rod can move the "invisibility cloak" along with the person's movement.

@Soul Painter, everyone use your imagination

After rounding it off like this, do you now have Harry Potter's "Invisibility Cloak"?

If you have any (bold) immature ideas, you can also discuss them in the comment section.