Scientists’ new time masker creates invisibility

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/04/MNB01ML0O6.DTL

Think of it as an art heist that takes place before your eyes and surveillance cameras. You don’t see the thief strolling into the museum, taking the painting down or walking away, but he did. It’s not just that the thief is invisible – his whole activity is.

What scientists at Cornell University did was on a much smaller scale, both in terms of events and time. It happened so quickly that it’s not even a blink of an eye. Their time cloak lasts an incredibly tiny fraction of a fraction of a second. They hid an event for 40 trillionths of a second, according to a study appearing in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature.

I like how the picture at the top mentions a possibility that the research couldn’t possibly lead to.  I also like how he later mentions the whole thing actually happens faster (waaay faster) than the human eye can see.