Granted, they have other solid tricks too (they are far from the one-trick-pony claims that several of their competitors face).
Lühring and his colleagues, part of a team of around 50 scientists from 15 European companies, universities and research institutes, found a formula that does the trick: solid materials such as aluminium mixed with soft ones such as silicone and even silicone foam, a very elastic substance that functions much the same as a bath sponge when it's squeezed.
Granted, the patent system Goldin used, which gives an inventor exclusive rights to a solid invention (which few tricks use) for a number of years, isn't the only American law magicians can take advantage of.
Mixing flat with solid props, painted backdrops and "trick" superimpositions, Méliès's deliriously complicated sets are filled with moving parts and special incongruities.
Entanglement also offers the promise of unbreakable cryptography, since an eavesdropper intercepting a message carried by entangled photons would have to break the entanglement to read it, thus giving himself away.Better still, Dr Gisin has managed not only to perform this trick in a solid, but to do so at the heady temperature of three degrees above absolute zero (3K).
The trick is communicating solid information without misleading anyone.
But since they look solid and are designed to trick your brain into belief, well your perception of how much space you have to move around shrinks to fit them.
A fun solid pair can do the trick, too.
Unfortunately, in solids, the laser-induced transparency trick makes too wide a spectral hole to slow light so dramatically, says physicist Phil Hemmer, now at Texas A&M University.
