“European researchers have taken the world a step closer to fictional wizard Harry Potter’s invisibility cape after they made an object disappear using a three-dimensional ‘cloak,’ a study published Thursday in the US-based journal Science showed. Scientists from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and Imperial College London used the cloak, made using photonic crystals with a structure resembling piles of wood, to conceal a small bump on a gold surface, they wrote in Science. ‘It’s kind of like hiding a small object underneath a carpet — except this time the carpet also disappears,’ they said.” (03/18/10)