Wednesday May 19. 2010

Rest Day Read (SR-26)
Metamaterial Revolution: The New Science of Making Anything Disappear.
by Fred Hapgood, Discover Magazine March 10, 2009
"The goal at hand, changing how objects interact with light, seemed at first blush to be routine; people had been manipulating visible light with mirrors and lenses and prisms nearly forever. But Zhang, a materials scientist then at the University of California at Los Angeles, knew those applications were limited. Based overwhelmingly on a single material, glass, the technologies were restricted by the laws of optics described in standard physics texts. The engineers in the room hoped to smash through those barriers with materials and technologies never conceived of before. The proposals included crafting what amounts to an array of billions of tiny relays; in essence, the relays would capture light and send it back out. Depending on the specific design of the array, the light would be bent, reflected, or skewed in different ways."

Yep people, this means invisibility. Definitely a ways down the road and depending on the ironing out of some technical glitches, but amazing technology, to say the least. As my one-of-a-kind Grandpa Bosley would say when presented with such modern inventions as the cordless phone, heart pacemakers, cruise control, car air conditioning and microwave ovens, "Well, I'll be damned".