[Dion]

Klingons beware!

The new substance is a "metamaterial" that negatively refracts light. Metamaterials with this property raise the theoretical possibility that light could bend completely around an object, making it effectively invisible. Scientists are awed by the implications of metamaterials.

"These materials would comprise a complete -- almost magical -- mastery over light," said David Schurig, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University, who did not participate in the new research. "They would enable not just invisibility cloaking, but arbitrary control over the richest information channel humans employ. One thing I know for sure, it will happen sometime between now and the technological singularity."

A cloaking device may be a decade away, but there are more immediate applications for metamaterials in exploiting the unique fingerprints that chemicals exhibit in the mid-infrared spectrum.

Researchers working only in the infrared band developed the new material. They believe the infrared part of the spectrum to be particularly useful outside physics, in fields like medicine, industrial safety and environmental sensing.

http://www.wired.com/science/discove...10/metamateria