FEBRUARY 10, 2023 – We were first introduced to the cloaking device in Star Trek: The Original Series’ season one episode, “Balance of Terror,” a fan favorite in which we are introduced to the Romulans and learn that they can make their ships invisible.

As science catches up with science fiction at varying rates, researchers in Austria and the Netherlands have taken a baby step toward such abilities. According to Freethink, physicists “have developed a unique light wave that, when beamed through an object, makes the object appear invisible to cameras and even the human eye.”

Rather than reflecting off an object and traveling to an eye or camera lens, the special light wave passes through the object, thus rendering it invisible. “To find the magic light wave, the team beamed a light at an opaque layer of randomly arranged zinc oxide nanoparticles. They calculated how the light was scattered by the zinc oxide powder and how it would scatter if the powder weren’t there at all. In work published in Nature Photonics, they found the light waves projected the same image onto a detector on the other side of the zinc oxide powder as if the powder wasn’t even there.”

The scientists hope that such technology will be useful in medical imaging or biomedical research such as to study tiny objects like biological cells.

Yes, but when will we be able to cloak our Birds of Prey? That is still in the indeterminate future.

For more on the new invisibility technology, head over to Freethink, where you can read or listen to the story.