DARPA: METAMATERIALS DEVELOPED TO BEND SOUND WAVES, DEFLECT TSUNAMIS, CREATE INVISIBLE ARMIES

Singapore: A new way of assembling things, called metamaterials, may in the not too distant future help to protect a building from earthquakes by bending seismic waves around it. Similarly, tsunami waves could be bent around towns, and soundwaves bent around a room to make it soundproof.

While the holy grail of metamaterials is still to make objects and people invisible to the eye, they are set to have a more tangible commercial impact playing more mundane roles — from satellite antennas to wirelessly charging cellphones.

Metamaterials are simply materials that exhibit properties not found in nature, such as the way they absorb or reflect light. The key is in how they’re made. By assembling the material — from photonic crystals to wire and foam — at a scale smaller than the length of the wave you’re seeking to manipulate, the wave can, in theory, be bent to will.

This makes metamaterials the tool of choice for scientists racing to build all sorts of wave-cloaking devices, including the so-called invisibility cloak — a cover to render whatever’s inside effectively invisible by bending light waves around it.

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This particular technology is very cool -- yet I am fearful of technology which replaces and/or destroys people. The replaced people may simply be destroyed by those with the most money and technology -- with absolutely no pity or remorse -- but I SO hope that I'm wrong. I will probably spend the rest of my miserable life conceptualizing and worrying -- as my last, great exercise in futility. It requires SO much inspiration, perspiration, pain, and suffering to do absolutely nothing. In the final analysis, there may be very, very few truly favored insiders with a ticket to a Brave New Universal Utopia. If it were up to me -- everyone would be on the bus (in some way, shape, or form) -- but I suspect that those with the Real Power are not as inclusive and compassionate as I...