14 DAY TRIAL // Experts with the Imperial College London (ICL) announce the creation of the world's first invisibility cloak for magnetic field. What the antimagnet shield does is shield a target object from the effects of the magnetic field for as long as researchers want it to.
According to the research team, which is based in the United Kingdom, this could have significant implications for the field of medicine. More and more drugs rely on nanoparticles or other particles that can be manipulated or activated via the use of magnetic field.
By shielding these agents from magnetic influence, doctors could allow them to take up their destined locations in the body, before they are activated in a coordinated assault. This could be put to good use against cancer, the researchers say.
The most interesting thing about this new cloak is that it functions by allowing an object to remain hidden from a magnetic field, without disturbing the field in the slightest. “This will take cloaking technology another step forward,” ICL theorist John Pendry explains.
The expert is also the co-inventor of the original idea about the cloak. He was not a part of this particular study. Thus far, science teams around the world managed to create invisibility cloaks that work for sound waves, water, as well as significant portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
If physicists want to dupe a magnetic field, then they need to protect the object being hidden inside a container made out of a superconducting material. What the latter does is ensure that all current being directed through it moves forward with no resistance.
Some materials only achieve this state when they are cooled to nearly absolute zero, but others are now being researched that could function at room temperature. An object covered with this material will be able to counteract an applied magnetic field, the team explains.
The experts say that currents which flow within the superconductor itself will come together to form a field that will counteract the applied magnetic field, essentially hiding the superconducting enclosure and everything within it from view.
What scientists are working on at this point is improving some of the traits this proposed device has. They explain that current setups – while obscuring the target object – also leave behind signs of their presence, through the way they interact with the magnetic field applied to the enclosure.
As such, physicists are now focused on finding materials that would counteract this effect, allowing no indication to pass that the applied fields were distorted in any way, ScienceNow reports.