Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak Might Exist Soon

The top three things I'm jealous of Harry Potter for: getting to hang out with Hermione Granger, eating biscuits in Professor McGonagall's office, owning an invisibility cloak. I've long accepted that the first two may never happen — but guess what? Harry Potter's invisibility cloak might become a reality, if scientists at the Queen Mary University in London have anything to do with it.

In J.K. Rowling's world, Harry's invisibility cloak defies all the laws of the universe, allowing him to patrol the corridors of Hogwarts totally unnoticed. In real life, this always seemed like a far-off dream — until now. Scientists have been exploring ways of disguising objects from sight for quite some time — but they may have just nailed it. By coating a curved surface with a nanocomposite medium made up of seven layers with different electric properties, they managed to prevent the curve from scattering electromagnetic waves. In Muggle language: they made it disappear.

Close readers of the Harry Potter series will remember that Harry's invisibility cloak was very much one-of-a-kind. Other invisibility cloaks may have existed, but only Harry's rendered the wearer truly invisible. Who knows how much longer that could be true for? Before long, we could be vanishing under real-life invisibility cloaks of our own any time we want to eavesdrop on a conversation, sneak in to celebrity after-parties we weren't invited to, or just avoid all of our friends and responsibilities and watch Netflix under the cloak all day.

OK, so maybe we're not quite there yet — but hey, a Muggle can dream!

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