Researchers 3D print a wormhole… for sound waves

Enlarge (credit: Jian Zhu)

I cannot skip a paper that talks about making wormholes. Even if they are fake wormholes. And even if, after reading the paper, I’m not sure that the researchers have made fake wormholes, I simply can’t not tell you about it.

The paper in question makes use of something called transformation optics to create a wormhole for sound waves. So let’s break that down.

Please transform my optics

Transformation optics is one of my favorite things (right after raindrops on roses and definitely replacing all mention of kittens). Designing optics is hard. You often know what you want an optical system to do, but figuring out how to achieve that is a matter of experience combined with trial and error.