(Image Source: Discovery News)

BY AUSTIN FAX

Now you see me. Now you don’t. Researchers now believe something that used to be science fiction -- the invisibility cloak -- is close to a reality.

The Early Show’s Jeff Glor shows us just how this vanishing act takes place.

“This device uses an optical phenomenon that bends light -- take a look -- to create an image that’s not really there. The technology from researchers at the University of Texas-Dallas say it could be the next new thing in espionage.”

So how did the researchers figure out a way to play Houdini? Wired’s Mark Brown says all they needed was a little heat and some inspiration from the desert.

“[They] have hijacked one of nature’s most intriguing phenomena -- the mirage. This unusual experience... can trick your brain into seeing objects that aren’t really there. It happens when a big change in temperature over a small distance bends light rays so they’re sent towards the eye rather than bouncing off the surface.”

ABC News’s Ned Potter gives us a little more on how the device works.

“They took carbon nanotubes -- cylindrical molecules with a remarkable ability to conduct heat -- and warmed them electrically. In a container of water, they were able to bend the light around them, making the sheet of material ‘disappear.’ By turning the heat on and off, they could make the sheet reappear … and disappear … and reappear … and disappear again.”

The cloak is just one of the uses for the technology developed in Dallas. IT World’s Kevin Fogarty says -- for now the researchers are also testing the technology for new ways to amplify sound.

“[T]he experiment probes the behavior of carbon nanotubes in ways that will make it easier to develop them into thermoacoustic projectors for loud speakers and for sonar devices that produce sound by electrically stimulating nanotubes rather than by having sailors yell into huge loudspeakers, as they do now. Which is kind of a disappointing way to use even a bad invisibility cloak, if you ask me.”

Fine. Maybe these researchers from Texas actually made the science happen. But a blogger from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer knows who is really at the heart of this breakthrough.

“[They] just made the world of Harry Potter look a little less far-fetched. Harnessing the science behind the well-known mirage effect, they made an invisibility cloak — just like the one Harry wears when sneaking around Hogwarts. OK, maybe it’s not exactly like that one.”