Metamaterials

Sometimes, invention is the mother of necessity.  In this case, researchers led by Professor John Rogers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign have developed an “optical metamaterial” that can bend light in a so-called “negative index of refraction.”  The material’s ingredients are silver and magnesium fluoride which are printed in specific patterns on a plastic substrate.  A practical application is a cloak that could make something or someone invisible to night vision glasses, but the concept is so astonishing that uses in, say medical imaging, camera pills, and scopes of all sorts will have to catch up with the science.  At one time, this was a DARPA project. MORE

Image Credit:  John Rogers and Technology Review