what a load of rubbish!
Firstly you can\'t speed light up any faster than the speed of light in a vaccuum. You can slow it down less or slow it down more.
By the time it reaches your eyes, presuming your eyes are in air, it will all be going the same speed again.
And there\'s no light that doesn\'t actually go through and be visible.
As for this slowing down the start and speeding up the tail nonsense so they overlap. Even if you could do that, you\'d maybe see the end of the event before the start. But you\'d still see it all.
Don\'t give these people any money please.

What an absolute load of hogwash.

Obviously, you guys don\'t know about meta-materials. Light has already been slowed down within certain materials.. I believe what they\'re talking about is a more sophisticated level of slowing down and speeding up light.
Up to you if you don\'t want to look into the research already done on this subject.

You\'re right.
These highly intelligent people at one of the top 10 universities in the world, couldn\'t possibly know what they\'re talking about.
They\'re bound to have announced something that can be knocked apart by some guy on the internet in seconds.
Clearly.

conceal events? the spin doctors have been doing this for years without the help of physics.

I guess I missed something that happened in the world of physics since I was in school, but isn\'t the speed of time constant? So how exactly do you \"speed it up\"? For that matter, how do you slow down the speed of light? I recognize that we do not fully understand all the laws of physics and there will doubtless be discoveries that may re-write our understanding of these laws. So, those of you who are saying it can be done, please provide links, references etc so I can read up on it. This is really exciting stuff!
I do agree with Adrien... from my limited understanding of the properties of light, even if you were able to \"speed up\" the leading light rays, wouldn\'t that mean that they would get to your eye before whatever other light rays were ahead of them... and even though this would not necessarily result in you seeing the end of an event before it\'s beginning, it would certainly cause a noticeable distortion because of the potential to receive two off-sync rays of light relating to the same source at exactly the same time.
The only way I see to avoid this would be if the source were not changing (i.e. either emitting or reflecting a constant stream of light at a steady wavelength) and you catch the very initial rays, or if you work only with light rays that you initiate yourself - kind of like if you turn on a flashlight and then manipulate the very first burst of rays...
In any case all this assumes that you have total control over all other potential sources of light -- so you are either working in absolute pitch blackness (in which case yay, congratulations, you already achieved invisibility so why this costly investment to achieve redundancy?) or you are able to manipulate the receiver\'s eye. Either way, real world application doesn\'t seem very feasible to me.
That being said, I am curious to know how this research develops... and if it will really require us to change our understanding of the laws of Physics. Exciting stuff! :)

meta materials all have one amazing property. They don\'t exist.
Do the math. Speed of light in vaccuum is 2.997925 x 10 ^8 m/s
you want to cloak an event that lasts 1ms
you have a theoretical material that has a refractive index of 10. That\'s over twice the refractive index of Sililcon, which is the highest listed on wikipedia.
that means the event you want to cloak needs to be sandwiched in between 2 blocks of material each 299m wide. which you are able to move in and out of the way instantaneously. LHC couldn\'t even move that much mass that quickly.
Santa Claus delivering all the presents on Christmas eve is much more plausible.

We\'ve had materials to \"slow down\" light for centuries...it\'s called \"glass\" or other refractive materials. They bend light (e.g. spectacles) by slowing down the light, which causes it to bend. The amount of bending (or slowing) is the material\'s refractive index.

Doc Rings, MD
Ophthalmology

Anybody claiming that this isn\'t possible obviously hasn\'t done their research. Read a few articles that AREN\'T from wikipedia, and come back here. Meta-materials are existent, and have been proven to be effective. Also, are you aware that there are many, MANY things moving beyond the speed of light right now? Sure, the speed of light is the constant within the universe, and nothing in the universe can move faster than the speed of light, however, E=MC(squared) does not apply to the universe itself. If the entire universe is expanding at a rate beyond the speed if light, then the objects within the universe are too. There are many things in the universe that we will never see, because they are moving away from us faster than the speed of light. This of course has nothing to do with what is said in the article, and is only a response to those saying that nothing can move faster than the speed of light.

Whatever the opinions of those who are against the theory of invisibility cloaks, I am all for it and all because, who knows, great discoveries are often the source of greater developments that were initially totally unrelated! So, come on guys, let\'s support this stuff!!