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Harry Potter invisibility cloaks possible in the future

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"Invisible man"Image source, Reuters
Image caption,

Can you spot him?

Have you ever thought about what superpower you'd like?

Harry Potter has a cloak that makes him invisible - so he can't be seen as he walks around.

Now scientists in America say they're a step closer to inventing a real one that can completely hide objects.

Scientists have being trying to make invisibility cloaks for many years.

But so far they've only been able to make ones to hide very small things.

But the team which has made this latest cloak, hope that it will be able to soon hide much larger things, and even conceal people.

They say it's because the cloak is thinner and more flexible.

How do they work?

Image source, Xiang Zhang group/Berkeley Laboratory
Image caption,

The invisibility cloak is made of thousands of tiny gold blocks

The human eye sees objects and their shape when light waves bounce off them and reflect back into our eyes.

The latest super-thin invisibility cloak is made from thousands of tiny gold-coloured blocks.

When the cloak wraps around an object, it changes the direction of the light waves to make it seem like they're bouncing off a flat surface.

This means that when you look at the cloak, it looks like you're looking at a flat surface and not at a 3-D object like a person.