If a tree falls in the woods...

A new article over at ArsTechnica discusses something new: cloaking the audio behind objects - using principals discovered while attempting to bend light around both 2D and 3D objects. The cloak would work by creating a material that duplicates the wavelengths of the sounds bouncing into it - this would allow you to make something 'disappear' across a given sound wave.

In light bending, you need spatial coordinates applied to a given cloaking surface to bend around the material, however in sound doesn't require bending these coordinates, which means you could cloak a broad range of frequencies.

I'm not entirely sure what that means, but it could mean sound dampening applied to nuclear submarines and military enclosures. A more realistic idea would be to apply such a technology to a car, reducing engine noise, or possibly to computers and the ever humming 'fridge in your kitchen. Personally, I'd put it in my walls - my roommate could blast P-Diddy whilst I simultaneously cranked Led Zepplin up loud enough to blow my trousers clean off.