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.

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Illumination wavelength

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One of their more promising goals is to create a "perfect lens" which would allow an every day person to view things as small as a virus with the naked eye.

Hmm, how does one see a 50nm virus when illuminated with 400 nm light, no matter how good the lens is? I guess you could illuminate it with far UV and use a fluorescent material to shift the wavelength of the magnified image into something visible, but I'm not sure what the lens has to do with that.