Five wonder materials that could change the world

Materials such as grapheme & shrilk are so new that the scientists who discovered them hardly know what to do with them they might transform our lives

"Five wonder materials that could change the world" The Guardian - "Materials such as graphene and shrilk are so new that the scientists who discovered them hardly know what to do with them – they only know they might yet transform our lives... Metamaterials: They owe their existence, in large part, to the enormously competitive microchip industry, which has refined manufacturing at the nano scale. Metamaterials are made with the same technology, but their design is so precise that scientists can control how electrons inside the materials respond when light – or other electromagnetic waves – strike them. And yes, metamaterials can – to some extent – bend light around an object, rendering that object invisible. 'You have to structure the material on a length scale that's short compared to the wavelength you're interested in, so for visible light that means on the nano scale,' says Chris Phillips [Physics] at Imperial College's physics department, where much of the work on cloaking devices has been pioneered."