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SCIENCE sometimes has an air of magic about it, while magicians in their turn exploit science to fool our senses. As Arthur C. Clarke once remarked, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and the same can be said for technology that is barely off the drawing board. Metamaterials are raising the possibility of making one object look like another (see “Illusion device could make one object look like another”), and while turning the concept into reality will take decades, the knowledge that it is even conceivable puts the magician’s art of illusion in the shade.