Trekkies everywhere have rushed to point out that a cloaking device developed by boffins at the University of Texas goes against the Treaty of Algeron.

The boffins claim that they have managed to cloak a three-dimensional object standing in free space and have hidden a 18-centimetre cylinder by making it totally invisible. So far they can only hide it from microwave scanners which makes it great for avoiding a police speed trap, but it is still  visible to the naked eye.

They claim that the technique could be used to hide objects from visible light - but that it would only work on objects on the millimetre scale, which are pretty tricky to see at the best of times. Published in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics, the researchers used a method known as "plasmonic cloaking" to hide an 18-centimetre cylindrical tube from microwaves. But the next stage will be to demonstrate the cloaking of a 3D object using visible light.

Of course it might miff the Romulans, who don't exist, but it will be coup for the Ministry of Magic who have been trying to develop one in the war against You Know Who.