More on Lenses with a Negative Index of Refraction

Roland Piquepaille writes "A University of Toronto researcher has developed a flat lens that doesn't respect the "normal" laws of nature and could significantly enhance the resolution of imaged objects. "The creation of an unusual flat lens may finally resolve a long-running controversy about the existence of materials that have metaphysical qualities -- so-called "metamaterials" -- that transcend the laws of nature. The lens could lead to amplified antennas, smaller cell phones and increased data storage on CD-ROMs. As says George Eleftheriades, the Toronto professor, "This is new physics." Check this column for more details and other references to metamaterials."

Comments

Data Loss

[violent.ed]

"A metamaterial lens "allows focusing almost two orders of magnitude higher than is possible with conventional lenses," explained Claudio Parazzoli, an associate technical fellow of the Boeing (NYSE: BA) Company. With metamaterial lenses, "the amount of information that could be stored on optical media would be vastly increased," Parazzoli told NewsFactor."

So in other words, that small scratch on my cd will fubar 2x or more data than on a regular cd.

DIFRACTION LENSES, actually. That's old.

[Nitrometano]

This teoretical lenses actuallly are not a "material", are an enginered net of a difractive pattern, and are predicted by modern cuantic difraction teory long time ago. Actually I was talked about it in my 1st year of Physics degree(8 years ago). Well, it promises lightweight googles for people with high miopia. Hey, mobile phones are small enough.