Universal mirror makes you more visible than ever

Damian Koh | Jul 21, 2009

The Universal mirror, also known as the Eaton lens, is like an inverting mirror. Light that enters the lens are "bent" around the center and leave in the same direction it comes from. (Credit: Aaron Danner)

As a child, I dreamed of getting my hands on an invisibility cloak similar to the one that Harry Potter would don at Hogwarts to get around unseen. I thought I was one step closer to my dream when scientists developed a cloaking technology with new engineered materials back in 2006. Now, they are creating things that do the exact opposite: Making everything more visible.

The Universal mirror uses metamaterials, the same stuff used in their invisibility technology, to reflect light at the same angle it comes from. The result is that you can see your own reflection clearly wherever you stand in front of the mirror. A conventional mirror bounces light at 90 degrees. An invisibility cloak, on the other hand, "bends" light around the object, making it invisible to the naked eye.

Metamaterials that can manipulate visible light have yet to be produced and the current ones can handle only the microwaves with longer wavelengths. The Universal mirror measures 100 x 10mm. That's approximately the size of an adult's palm.

Practical uses of the Universal mirror, while still light years away, are apparently plentiful. It can be used to track objects with radar, deflect laser strikes in a military deployment and act as a shield to bounce laser beams back to their source.

That's a lot of futuristic talk here, but we've emailed Aaron Danner, an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore who is one of the collaborators in this project that involves scientists from Europe and Asia, to see if he can share more insights. Or perhaps even let us take a look at the mirror.