The Theory and Practice of Meta-materials

[jducoeur]

Science geeks might want to check out this article from Ars Technica last week, talking about the theoretical "super-antenna". It's talking about a very hypothetical concept -- essentially, how to produce coherent light without a laser -- but the first half of the article is actually the most interesting bit.

Basically, it talks about the latest step in what I see as scientists coming to terms with the mathematical nature of the universe: instead of taking existing materials and figuring out how to use them, they've begun to address problems in terms of how you want to bend space, and then invent meta-materials that can accomplish that. Which approach sounds a bit improbable, but is starting to actually produce some results: for a very early field, meta-materials seem to be producing a lot of fascinatingly cool possibilities.

Neat stuff -- it's one of those "yes, we really *are* living in the 21st century" stories. I'll be interested to see how much success they have in turning these cool theories into practice...

Comments

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

Haven't read the article yet, but it occurs to me that if I read you aright, there's a certain amount of prior art here, at least in the general conceptual sense. Take, for example, pharmaceuticals. While there's still a very significant amount of "let's grind this stuff up, feed it to a rat, and see what it does" there's also a rapidly increasing amount of "we need to design a molecule that gets through this membrane and then binds reversibly to this receptor on this kind of cell".