There has been a lot of excitement among researchers about the science of invisibility over the past decade, and a variety of designs of invisibility cloaks have been suggested since the groundbreaking 2006 papers. I’ve talked a lot about invisibility on this blog, but I haven’t said a lot about one of the most intriguing — and overlooked — possibilities: the use of cloaking to protect objects, instead of just hide them!
What do I mean? Well, an invisibility cloak is, in principle*, a material structure that guides light around a central space — the cloaked region — and sends it on its way as if it had hit nothing at all. An illustration of how this would work for light rays, from the original paper by Pendry, Schurig and Smith, is shown below.
The black lines represent the light rays, being bent around the cloaked region (inner sphere). Such a cloak, however, is not limited to rays of light; it has been demonstrated that it guides waves of light perfectly, as well.
But if a cloak can be designed to deflect light waves, it stands to reason, then why not other types of waves, or fields? Magnetic fields could be deflected, to protect sensitive electronics within. Water waves could be deflected, to protect offshore platforms or buoys from damaging waves during extreme storms. Or, maybe — just maybe — seismic waves from earthquakes could be guided around vulnerable buildings!
Recent research* suggests that protecting buildings from earthquakes might be possible, at least to a limited extent. In experimental work published in April of this year, French researchers were able to screen, or protect, a region of earth from artificially generated seismic waves.
Skulls in the Stars 
