Will transparent metal make invisibility a reality?
27 Aug 2009 by Evoluted New Media
Researchers from the University of Oxford have created a new transparent form of aluminium which may have implications for astrophysics and nuclear fusion.
Researchers from the University of Oxford have created a new transparent form of aluminium which may have implications for astrophysics and nuclear fusion.
The team report in Nature Physics that pulses from a laser knocked out a core electron from every aluminium atom in a sheet without disrupting the metal’s crystalline structure. This change in the aluminium causes it to appear almost invisible to ultraviolet light. Although the invisible effect only lasted for a matter of femtoseconds, for this time the aluminium looked and behaved as though it was a different state of matter.
The transparent aluminium was created by using the FLASH laser in Germany which produces extremely short pulses of soft x-ray radiation. Each pulse from the FLASH laser uses more energy than an entire city.
“What we have created is a completely new state of matter that nobody has seen before. Transparent aluminium is just the start,” said Professor Justin Wark who co-authored the paper. “In certain respects, the way it reacts is as though we had changed every aluminium atom into silicon - it’s almost as surprising as finding you can turn lead into gold with light!”
The group have proved that new exotic states of matter can be created by using very high power x-ray sources and this may lead to further work in astrophysics and nuclear fusion.
Professor Wark said: “The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of ‘miniature stars’ created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth.”
By Leila Sattary
