Duke scientists set sights on cloak of invisibility

After years of work, David Schurig and David R. Smith at Duke University will finish their research and have absolutely nothing to show for it: They're making a cloak of invisibility.

Really.

So unusual is this undertaking for a serious academic electrical engineering team that Smith has created an elaborate Web site discussing the dream of invisibility as viewed in science fiction--Harry Potter and the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft are mentioned--and relating such ideas to scientific fact.

In theory, Smith said, it's possible to make light follow curved lines that skirt an object rather than illuminate it. Light "circulates around the void--like water flowing past a rock in a stream," Smith explained.

This would create a void in space--a place that is invisible.