The Harry Potter's sixth movie installation is well on its way to the movies, and still we're stuck with that one object he had way back the first story: Harry's invisibility cloak. It really is a magical object, and I'm sure there's not just a few of you out there who's wished that they had their own.

Well, US scientists are now saying that we are actually a step closer to manufacturing an invisibility cloak ourselves, and really, it's no magic. Over the past several years, development has been chugging along for the production of a material that people can wear for invisibility.

Today, researchers at the University of California in Berkeley have developed a material that bends light around 3D objects, thus resulting to a "disappearing" effect. This light-bending effect is actually dependent on reversing refraction, or that effect which makes a straw in water appear to be bent.

Two teams, led by Xiang Zhang, worked on the project, making objects out of "metamaterials", that artificial structures which feature smaller than the wavelength of light that is responsible for the material's unusual properties. One of the approaches used was that of a nanometre-scale stacks of silver and magnesium flouride in a "fishnet" structure. The other method used silver nanowires.

The effect is that of light neither absorbed nor reflected, and instead passes "like water flowing around a rock," so the researchers describe. This thereby creates the effect wherein only the light from behind the objects can be perceived.

Professor Ortwin Hess of the Advanced Technology Institute at the University of Surrey states, "This is a huge step forward, a tremendous achievement. It's a careful choice of the right materials and the right structuring to get this effect for the first time at these wavelengths."

He is obviously thrilled that we are getting closer to that much-desired Harry Potter cloak. "In order to have the 'Harry Potter' effect, you just need to find the right materials for the visible wavelengths, and it's absolutely thrilling to see we're on the right track.

The findings of the University of California scientists led by Zhang were published in the journals Nature and Science.

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