Ready to have your mind blown? Let's see if we can work our way through this. A scientist at the University of Rochester has figured out a way to create an electromagnetic "wormhole" that bends light and makes it appear to be coming from another dimension. How does it work, pray tell?

A hollow shell of metamaterial could in principle channel a single frequency of light around its inner space without slowing the light down, rendering that hidey-hole invisible to the outside world at that frequency. But the invisibility cuts both ways. If light does not enter, then whatever is in the cloak cannot see outside, says mathematician Allan Greenleaf of the University of Rochester. So Greenleaf turned the cloak inside out. In work submitted to a major physics journal, he and colleagues report that the light-warping trick works for an open tube with flared ends. Viewed straight on, light zipping down the cylinder would be plainly visible. But from the side, the light would appear to come out of nowhere, as though sent on a detour to another dimension and back.

So basically it would be a very expensive, very trippy optical illusion. Will it be built and serve some practical application? Probably not, but it's pretty sweet to think that we live in a time when someone figured out how to build a wormhole, eh? — Adam Frucci

Thanks, Falon!

Via Scientific American