The Desire to Be Invisible

The idea of invisibility, once confined to the realm of science fiction, is now closer to becoming a reality thanks to recent technological advances. Metalenses and metamaterials hold immense potential to manipulate the light waves of all wavelengths around an object, rendering it invisible. These nanotechnology devices together are expected to bring in the world’s first functioning and universal invisibility cloak.

The progress in this direction was sparked by the creation of the broadband achromatic metalens in 2018, which made an object imperceptible across the entire visible light spectrum for the first time. However, the slogan on the “visibility” aspect of this breakthrough can be seen as a witty remark.