It may often get overshadowed in an age where AI, superconductors and other tech dominate the news but I sincerely belief meta materials will be the biggest game changer anyone of us will know in their lifetime.
Aren't superconductors a meta material?
Can you elaborate? I never heard of meta materials before.
(Half chatgpt half me) Meta materials or nano composites (they have a few names) are materials engineered to have properties not found in naturally occurring materials.
They are designed on a microscopic scale to manipulate electromagnetic waves in specific ways. This can result in unique optical, acoustic, and thermal properties, like being able to bend light or sound waves in unconventional directions. Common applications include advanced optics, wireless communication enhancements, and even invisibility cloaks and self cleaning surfaces in theoretical designs.
There is a really cool tinfoil hat (!!!) story on how we discovered they are possible, Lets say that since certain events in Boston and Roswell The US Air Force seems to have kickstarted and is often involved in this research. In the posted article the The US Air Force Office of Scientific Research was also stated to be funding this research. Take it with a cool grain of salt.
Why does the army need to buy a piece of a spaceship from a conspiracy theorist to do research, if according to the conspiracy theory, they have that spaceship in a hangar?
[tinfoil hat on] They don’t. They have pieces of things they didn’t understand, electromagnetic waves hit it one way and come back stronger. Eventually a scientist must have handled one and realize the potential.
[tinfoil hat off]
Regardless if this material is natural or artificial we cant just make it ourselves, our own technology and industry has yet to get to the level of the example material. Hence the funding.
There is a popular(*?) podcast or interview where a scientist shows some of it. Apparently if you have the right credentials you can borrow what is essentially a plastic bag labeled “Boston” with some black rock shards in it. Of course the nature of origin remains pure speculation but i really wish i knew the link to send you.
*I rarely watch podcasts, but it looked credible and serious to me and i’ve seen their face before, not joe rogan
Don't believe everything you hear on a popular(*?) podcast
Seems my edit didnt go trough, i take that story with big grains of salt. Just interested in the topic.
On this day, we are all juggaloes.
What are magnets anyway?
Dammit! *paints black and white clown face.
The article linked here is rubbish, CrSBr is not a meta material and also not a superconductor. It is a layered semiconductor. However, the Nature article they link to is quite interesting. The background is in cavity engineering, which is where one tries to modify intrinsic material properties by coupling to light "strongly". This is usually done by creating a cavity (think two opposing mirrors around the material) and have light bounce back and forth.
Here instead they don't need to use mirrors, but the refractive index is different enough to trap light in the material, and the electronic properties seem to be quite sensitive to the light because the magnetic phase is sensitive to magnetic fields and the different magnetic phases have quite different electronic properties. So all in all they find a strong light-matter coupling but only below 132K (the critical temperature of the magnetic phase).
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
