Thursday, July 30, 2009

Scientists create ultraviolet-transparent aluminum

Scientists create ultraviolet-transparent aluminum, article.
Listen to this:
"...but this is the first time pure aluminum has been rendered transparent. But you won't really be able to see through it — it's only invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation." and: "There's a catch, though: The aluminum sample turned transparent was tiny — less than a 20th of the width of a human hair in diameter. And the amount of power required to create this minuscule window was equal to that of a power plant providing electricity to an entire city. Oh, and the see-through aluminum reverts quickly back to its natural state"

Ah. So I guess it'll be at least several months before we can buy shatter-free glass replacement aluminum commercially.

4 comments:

Michael Burton said...

This reminds me of a newspaper article about scientists discovering the gluon, a sub-atomic particle that holds quarks together to form particles like protons and neutrons. The article compared the new particle to sub-atomic super glue.

"No immediate commercial use is foreseen," the article said.

Good thing. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to un-stick something that had been accidentally glued together with gluon glue?

Alex said...

Hearing of people messing with crystal lattices, ah, what's that word, polymorph, has got me thinking about Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" and Ice-Nine.

Nano technology/material science is both cool, and scary.

kronostar said...

I'd say it's a conspiracy by the aluminum hat consortium to prevent their beloved protective head gears from being penetrable to the mind control waves from the powers that be. ;)

Anonymous said...

I'm confused. I thought Scotty gave them the formula for that way back in 1984.