Natalia Antonova

Hurray! Awesome! Way to go! J.K. Rowling has totally predicted the future! We have invisibility cloaks now! Well... sort of.

I’m sure you’ve caught at least something on the news about invisibility cloaks lately. They’ve kept popping up over the years - as scientific knowledge in this field continues to expand.

However, if you actually take the trouble to read any articles on the matter, even articles for laypeople (such as this one in The Christian Science Monitor) -  you’ll be confronted with the fact that right now, latest developments mean that an object was concealed by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin to microwave waves. Yes, microwaves waves - i.e. not to the human eye.

That’s kind of the thing that everyone tends to miss when they’re busy getting excited about pop science stories. Invisibility cloak research is complicated and cool, and kind of has a way to go.

And while it goes on its way, researchers won’t be coming up with ways to cloak Daniel Radcliffe so teenage girls could sneak him past their parents and into their bedrooms (hey, Radcliffe IS objectively kind hot. It doesn’t matter that he totally had to go through puberty in front of an entire planet, basically. He’s a man. It makes me feel old to say it, but it’s true).

Most likely, researchers will be busy cloaking military equipment - a.k.a., coming up with ways to more efficiently sneak up on people, so that they can then be killed. Defense budgets are sacred, after all - even in this economy.

The whole military thing is probably the ultimate reason as to why I can’t be bothered to get worked up about invisibility cloaks. No offense to members of the world’s various armed forces - I come from a family with a major military background, that background played a crucial role in my own upbringing - I’m just not into war a whole lot these days.

I wish the cooler research out there wasn’t being weaponized - but, I guess, that’s not the world we live in. Even Hogwarts saw its fair share of violence by magical means.