Bringing Back the Magic In Metamaterials

Charliemopps writes: Though it's 30 years late, transparent aluminum, as predicted in the 1986 film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, may finally be here. There have been many attempts to create transparent metals in the past few years, and some have been somewhat successful, if only for a few femtoseconds. But now, by modifying metals like silver and aluminum at the subwavelength scale, researchers are developing "Meta-Materials" that cause light to interact with these metals in new and interesting ways. One of their more promising goals is to create a "perfect lens" which would allow an everyday person to view things as small as a virus with the naked eye.

Comments

Slashdot No Longer For Geeks!

[Irate Engineer]

I'm going to get modded to Hades in a second by the Dice fanbois, but damn...why don't we just post some Beiber videos here and be done with it? I don't think ten Slashdot posters locked in a room with two sticks could reinvent fire.

Seeing viruses? Under any visible magnification, using whatever material as your lens, viruses are invisible. Unless transparent aluminium comes in the form of an electron microscope you're not going to see anything except for your willy, if you're lucky (where else would you be looking for viruses, hmm?).

Does anybody with a B.S. degree (not a BS degree, a B.S. degree) preview any of this crap before posting it?

Signed

The Even More Irate Engineer