Time Cloak?

[Australis]

I have no particular thoughts (brain currently siezed), but what do you think?

Pentagon-supported physicists say they have devised a "time cloak" that briefly makes an event undetectable.


The laboratory device manipulates the flow of light in such a way that for the merest fraction of a second an event cannot be seen, according to a paper published in the science journal Nature.


It adds to experimental work in creating next-generation camouflage - a so-called invisibility cloak in which specific colours cannot be perceived by the human eye.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8398571/Physicists-time-cloak-stops-the-clock

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Um, how does this make the event undetectable? From the description it seemed that it was already undetectable, just that the two beams of light didn't detect it? What am I missing?

 

[Romulan_spy]

Um, how does this make the event undetectable? From the description it seemed that it was already undetectable, just that the two beams of light didn't detect it? What am I missing?

It makes the event undetectable because light is bent in such way that it is physically impossible to see the event at all. This is better than mere camouflage where the event is simply hard to see.

 

[corpusearthling]

It may be meaningless to discuss the feasibility of time machines. If they exist, how could we know? They may have been common knowledge "yesterday," but then the timeline was reset. Why would "they" tell "us"?
Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic. Perhaps that's also true if you leave off the words "from magic."

 

[Lindley]

This has very little to do with time, so much as timing.

 

[Ronald Held]

I only read the abstract.

 

[arch101]

The fact they even have something like this in the prototype phase knocked me out of my chair.

 

[RoJoHen]

This has very little to do with time, so much as timing.

Yeah. The name "time cloak" is very misleading.