Perhaps the best application is to build the Rochester Cloak in physics labs, as a teaching tool to show students how math and science can do magic. So how do you make a Rochester Cloak?

Still more teams are out there with ideas to make things invisible — using methods ranging from superlenses that cancel out the light from nearby objects to actual cloaks onto which video can be ...

This technology, called illusion optics, draws on the same principles behind invisibility cloaks, which were first unveiled in 2006. To make an object like an apple invisible, light is bent around ...