Photo: Invisibility-Cloak Materials Bend Light "Backward"

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A scanning electron microscope image shows a prism made of a new metamaterial—a fishnet array of silver and magnesium fluoride that can bend visible light the "wrong" way in three dimensions.

Such materials are early steps in developing an invisibility cloak that would cause light to "flow" around an object like water around a boulder.

Image courtesy J. Valentine, et al.

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