We’ve all read or seen fiction stories about the invisible man, usually the result of an experiment gone bad, and we can’t help but wonder: will it ever be possible to create a device that could turn us invisible? That would mean of course finding ways of bending the light as we please, and that is not an easy task.

However, science has evolved a great deal in recent years, and the idea that once seemed pure fiction could now turn reality. Two teams of physicists have achieved a method of bending light to the point of creating an optical illusion that makes objects appear in a different position from the one they have in reality.

The two teams of scientists were led by Xiang Zhang of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at the University of California, Berkley, and their work is expected to appear this week in the journals Science and Nature.

With the help of so-called metamaterials, which are artificially created three-dimensional structures that respond to specific excitation differently that any materials found in nature, the researchers succeeded in reversing the direction of light. Metamaterials are known to have unusual properties, including the negative refraction of light.

The refractive index of a medium is in fact measured by how much of the speed of light is reduced inside the medium. The negative refractive index is known to occur in artificially created conditions, and is not believed to occur naturally.

Until now, scientists have only been able to work with two-dimensional objects to create the negative refracting index materials and the “invisibility” effect.

Creating an “invisibility cloak” is not easy, but creating a cloaking device first would create the premises for an invisibility device in the future. For the first time ever, scientists have managed to bend light in a 3D environment and bend light around objects, creating an amazing optical illusion.

The next step, necessary for achieving the ultimate goal of creating an “invisibility cloak,” would mean manipulating the light even more, by curving the light waves around the cloaked object so as to create the illusion that the object isn’t even there.

One team of scientists used a fishnet structure with alternating layers of metal, while the other team used a structure made of silver nanowires, both with negative refractive index, to obtain basically the same results: refract visible light.

A cloaking device could find many uses in multiple domains, but one of the main purposes would probably be military camouflage. It has recently been reported that the British Army has already begun testing an “invisible” tank.

However, this method of bending light could be used in experimental devices in the future, but for more immediate applications, superior optical devices would probably be closer to reality.

So far, cloaking devices have been used in a large number of science fiction settings, the most famous of which is probably Star Trek, but with the new discoveries, we seem to be getting one step closer to creating the “invisibility cloak” and perhaps one day the “invisible man.”