I love when a headline straight out of a science fiction movie shows up on a website like National Geographic. Physicists at Imperial College London are now playing with the idea of space-time invisibility cloaks. That is, cloaks that mask not just an object but an entire event from outside observers.
Can you imagine? A bank heist could take place right under all the security in the world, completely invisible, only noticed when a few million dollars are mysteriously gone. There would be no observable trace of the robbers or their misdeeds. By the time the bank figured out what they were missing, the crafty wielders of physics would be driving away with piles of cash. Sounds like the foundation for a new futuristic crime show.
The cloak would work by slowing down light around a particular location. Once the event was finished, it would speed the light back up. You'd essentially be bending space-time around a particular event. I think. My knowledge of high-level physics is generally limited to what I've gleaned from Mass Effect and episodes of Battlestar Galactica. I do know that this kind of cloak works differently from the invisibility cloaks that have been proven to work at very small scales. Those simply bend light around an object. But bending light and bending time are two very different games. These English scientists seem to think both are possible.
Fiber optics technology might be manipulated in such a way as to construct materials to build a space-time cloak. But you'd need an extremely powerful laser for it to work for even the tiniest fraction of a second. Normal daylight just wouldn't cut it. So unless you're robbing banks in a world lit by lasers where you can crack a safe in a femtosecond, your perfect sci-fi getaway is still a long way from working.