Scientists create device that tears a hole in time, enabling undetectable secret messages to be sent (so long as you do it in 0.00012 of a second)

• A ‘time cloak’ which bends light to tear holes in time has been created
• It could allow secret messages to be sent via fibre optic cables
• It can hide a continuous stream of events at telecommunications data rates
• The holes are made by bending light using equipment known as modulators
• Technique can cloak 46 per cent of the entire time axis and conceal pseudorandom digital data at a rate of 12.7 gigabits per second

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED:13:05 EST, 5 June 2013| UPDATED:13:06 EST, 5 June 2013

The device could have important implications for sending secret messages via fibre optic cables.

The device can hide a continuous stream of events at telecommunications data rates – much quicker than a similar invention unveiled last year.

Researchers used equipment known as modulators to make the holes by bending light, reports Nature.

Although a long way off the fictional ‘invisibility cloaks’ featured in Star Trek and the Harry Potter films the concept could have practical applications to conceal messages.

A time or ‘temporal’ cloak that made a single event undetectable by speeding up and slowing down different parts of a light beam was described 17 months ago.

But this technique only hid single brief events over periods of 0.00012 of a second – too slow for optical communications.

Andrew Weiner and colleagues have now demonstrated an alternative method based on a phenomenon known as the Talbot effect when light passing through a grating travels in different directions.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2336425/Scientists-create-device-tears-hole-time-enabling-undetectable-secret-messages-sent.html#ixzz2VghuaCDg
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