Space Time Cloak could allow users to manipulate time and eventsThe cloak takes advantage of the potential properties of "metamaterials" -- artificial materials designed and manipulated at a molecular level to interact with and control electromagnetic waves.
Scientists have previously demonstrated that one possible use of metamaterials could be to render objects invisible by bending light around them. But the concept of invisibility to a cloak also capable of hiding events both in time and space.
Metamaterials made it theoretically possible to manipulate light rays as they enter a material so that some parts speed up and others slow down. This could create "blind spots" in time, masking an event. While the accelerated light arrives at a space before an event has happened, the rest of the light doesn't reach it until after the event.
The "technology" would have its uses for criminals.
A safe cracker would be able, for a brief time, to enter a scene, open the safe, remove its contents, close the door and exit the scene, whilst the record of a surveillance camera apparently showed that the safe door was closed all the time.
The metamaterials necessary to create the perfect cloak are still many decades away, while any prospect of upscaling the technology to conceal events even lasting a few minutes remains in the realm of science fiction because of the vast scale of the cloak that would be needed.
But current optical-fibre technology could be used to construct a "poor man's cloak" capable of demonstrating "proof of concept" by imperfectly hiding events taking place over a few nanoseconds.
Research activities in the field of invisibility had exploded since he first published papers on the subject in 2006. While optical cloaking technologies remained a long way off, there have been some very promising experiments involving cloaking soundwaves.
