The BBC is reporting on new metamaterials being discussed at the American Physical Society's March Meeting. Metamaterials are simply "artificial materials engineered to have properties that have not yet been found in nature". The most well-known metamaterials have a "negative refractive index" and have been compared by the press to the invisibility cloak from Harry Potter.
The conference, running from March 2 - 6 in San Antonio, Texas, has seen metamaterials that do far more than bend electromagnetic waves. Researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have shown off "unfeelability cloaks" that can deflect pressure around an object. Related work could lead to the deflection of earthquake waves around structures. A programmable spongelike metamaterial can be made to exhibit "negative stiffness", ie. softer when under pressure. This property could be useful in car bumpers (normally stiff, but soft on impact) or shoe soles. Also discussed are materials with a negative "Poisson ratio", which could lead to longer lasting engine parts, and highly compressible ceramics with shape memory.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2015, @06:09AM
This is an example of a first post.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2015, @09:28AM
"Compared by the press to the invisibility cloak from Harry Potter."
More accurately compared by everyone that matters to the invisibility cloak of Romulan birds of Prey from Star Trek, being that Romulan Cloaking Technology is described as the product of a science that allows a field to be generated which cloaks vessels (similar to how some meta materials operate); When compared to a magical blanket that hides you from monsters or (evil) teachers, as in Harry Potter, the press seems quite daft, by comparison.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 05 2015, @07:00PM
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C. Clarke
(Score: 2) by arslan on Thursday March 05 2015, @10:08PM
But magic in a movie about a magic school kid is pretty distinguishable from any form of advanced technology...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sudo rm -rf on Thursday March 05 2015, @12:36PM
I really like the elastic ceramics (as featured in the BBC-video) - stronger than steel, but not as brittle as your standard ceramic (Al2O3 in this case). But what really catched my interest - and I'm going offtopic here - is the picture of a bird-riding squirell on the same page [bbc.com]