Time Holes Can Make Things Invisible

Physics waits for no one.

In 2006, researchers first successfully created a “spatial” invisibility cloak, using electromagnetics to bend light around an object and make it disappear from ordinary vision. Now, a team of physicists at Cornell University claims to have succeeded at “temporally cloaking,” making things invisible using a hole in time. The team ran an experiment where they sent light down a fibre-optic cable at different wavelengths. Since part of the cable carried blue faster than red, the colours separated. In the space between them, there was a “time hole” of total darkness. It lasted only 50 trillionths of a second, though with a machine 18,600 miles long it could likely last a full second.

Image courtesy of Reuters.