Now we can make a big holding tank and save the whales !

 

Transparent aluminium is 'new state of matter'

 
Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world's most powerful soft X-ray laser. 'Transparent aluminium' previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.
 
In this week's Nature Physics an international team, led by Oxford University scientists, report that a short pulse from the FLASH laser 'knocked out' a core electron from every aluminium atom in a sample without disrupting the metal's crystalline structure. This turned the aluminium nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation.
 
''What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,' said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University's Department of Physics, one of the authors of the paper. 'Transparent aluminium is just the start.
 
full at http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2009/090727_2.html
 
 
I hope they give Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott some of the credit.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Transparent_aluminum

 

 

 

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