Mathematicians now suspect quirks in energy-cloaking
metamaterials could be exploited to create powerful quantum
probes called "Schrödinger's hats". Although not yet built or
proven in the real world, such hats -- their name a nod at Erwin
Schrödinger's famous cat-boxing thought experiment -- might
record extremely subtle signals that would otherwise be
scrambled by any attempt to measure Should the theoretical work
pan out in the laboratory, Schrödinger's hats could be a boon to
nanotechnology, where the simple act of observing a nanoscale
object can confound a "Conceptually, a Schrödinger's hat is like
an invisible battery. It captures a tiny bit of energy without
fiddling with the [energy] waves so you can later get a
measurement," said Allan Greenleaf, a mathematician at the
University of Rochester. Greenleaf co-authored a study of the
Schrödinger's hats published 29 May in Proceedings of the
National Academy of "If you're trying to image something at the
nanoscale, say a computer chip or nanodevice, you