The ability to hide objects in space– invisibility cloaking– has leapt from the world of science fiction to practical reality within 10 years. But the ability to hide objects in time– temporal cloaking– is evolving even faster.

During the last two years, physicists have begun using exotic metamaterials to create holes in time. The first time cloak lasted only for 100 nanoseconds or so. But last month, researchers showed how to cloak data almost half of the time. That’s an impressive improvement.

Today, Miguel Lerma at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, goes even further. Lerma has worked out how to build time cloaks that can operate for arbitrarily long periods of time using little more than a few cleverly placed mirrors.

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