Photos Refraction Index
A negative refractive index would occur if you tried to stick the straw into the water and it bounced back at the exact but opposite angle it entered the water. Now imagine the straw is instead a powerful laser. A ship made of conventional materials struck by such a laser would be sliced in half. Not only would this ship reflect the beam, the more powerful the beam, the stronger the reflection would be, notes Halterman. Like all optical metamaterials, their unique properties work only if the size of the structure is smaller than the wavelength of light being used. Since the Navy metamaterial would use very small structures it should repel nearly all lasers. Recently Feng and Halterman were awarded a grant from the Office of Naval Research to turn their theory into reality. They received the grant after publishing their research in the Feb. 15, 2008 edition of the Physical Review Letters. Even with the money it will likely be a while before the laser-reflecting material is functional. But if someone were to build it, "it would be very interesting," said Anthony Starr, president of SensorMetrix, a company that does metamaterial research. "A lot of possibilities would be raised. The trick would be making it." Related Links: Tracy Staedter's blog: What the Tech? Duke University's Invisibility Cloak |
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