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Researchers have demonstrated for the first time they were accomplished to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects. Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects.

The findings, by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, led through Xiang Zhang, are to be released later this week in the journals Nature and Science.

The new work moves scientists a remove closer to hiding people and objects from visible light, which could have spread applications, including military ones.

People can see objects because they scatter the light that strikes them, reflecting some of it outer part to the perforation. Cloaking uses materials, known at the same regulate that metamaterials, to deflect radar, light or other waves in a circle an aim, like wet flowing around a smooth rock in a stream.

Metamaterials are mixtures of metal and circuit board materials such as ceramic, Teflon or fiber compounded. They are designed to crook visible light in a way that ordinary materials don’t. Scientists are trying to conversion to an act them to bend light around objects so they don’t create reflections or shadows.

It differs from stealth technology, which does not make an aircraft invisible if it be not that reduces the cross-section available to radar, make it oppressive to track.

The research was funded in part by the U.S. Army Research Office and the National Science Foundation’s Nano-Scale Science and Engineering Center.