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Published online 19 September 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1113

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Opening the door to Hogwarts

Scientists demonstrate how to make a hidden portal.

Philip Ball

For readers bored with stories about how physicists are developing invisibility cloaks1 just like the one that teenage wizard Harry Potter uses to sneak around Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, here's a welcome respite: physicists developing a way of hiding entrances to things — just like the entrance to the railway platform that Harry Potter uses to get to Hogwarts in the first place.

As our illustration shows, signs for Platform 93/4 already exist at King's Cross station in London — a stone's throw from the Nature offices — but visitors attempting to push a trolley through to the mystical platform itself will be in for a rude shock.

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  • Projecting a real image in space is unremarkable, http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/real_image/index.html http://www.physlink.com/estore/cart/3DMirascope.cfm

    • 19 Sep, 2008
    • Posted by: "Uncle Al" Schwartz

  • The anti-cloak is now published on Opt. Express 16, 14603-14608 (2008). Another of application of the superscatterer is: Reshaping the perfect electrical conductor cylinder at will by H.Y. Chen et al. at: http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.0536

    • 20 Sep, 2008
    • Posted by: Huanyang Chen

  • The Reference 2, which is the first paper about 'superscatterer', now can be found on Optics Express Vol.16,Iss.22,pp.18545-18550(2008)

    • 29 Oct, 2008
    • Posted by: Tao Yang