Chicago | April 6

AFP - Harry Potter fans take note: scientists have finally come up with a workable design for an invisibility cloak.

Physicists figured out the complex mathematical equations for making objects invisible by bending light around them last year.

A group of engineers at Purdue University in Indiana have now used those calculations to design a relatively simple device that ought to be able to - one day soon - make objects as big as an airplane simply disappear.

The design calls for tiny metal needles to be fitted into a hairbrush-shaped cone at angles and lengths that would force light to pass around the cloak. This would make everything inside the cone appear to vanish because the light would no longer reflect off it.

"It looks pretty much like fiction, I do realize, but it's completely in agreement with the laws of physics," said lead researcher Vladimir Shalaev, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue.

"Ideally, if we make it real it would work exactly like Harry Potter's invisibility cloak," he said. "It's not going to be heavy because there's going to be very little metal in it."