Here’s the latest breakthrough in modern optical technology.

When light passes through material such as glass, a portion of its energy is lost as it reflects off the material’s surface. Researchers at Japan’s Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (Riken) have come up with a theoretical design for preventing this phenomenon from occurring.

The researchers have designed a prism of engineered material — metamaterial comprised of an arrangement of nano-coils of precious metals such as gold or silver — embedded in a solid glass-like material. The prism structure has a negative refractive index, which makes it truly transparent to light, allowing it to pass freely through with no reflection.

In the future, this type of metamaterial prism could lead to improvements in low-loss fiber optic communications, the development of telescopes and cameras well-suited for dark subjects, and the emergence of optical equipment we have never seen before.

What does that all mean? Let me dumb it down for my kind readers:

You know those hot promotional girls you find at motor shows and marketing events? Like these girls at the IAA Frankfurt Motor Show 2005 or the Betelnut Beauties in Taiwan? Well it could get a little unsafe having a job like that because the nature of the male population visiting those events are sometimes questionable. Now get this, with this new invention product vendors and business owners can protect their stunningly beautiful ass-ets in totally transparent booths or kiosks. These would be arm-length cubical kiosks with dime-sized holes for air and audio where the girls can move freely and attract visitors. The unsuspecting crowd would think that these girls are accessible when in fact they’re safely caged in transparent cubes. They would be able to move freely and communicate with everyone around them through the breathing holes. Of course this would kill physical interaction but with some imagination you could replace it with something even better. Daring companies could market their products in total bareness at shopping malls and street corners and the cops and gang-bangers won’t be able to touch their precious ass-ets. Quite a technology eh? Well folks, first they need to figure out how to make this transparent metamaterial bullet-proof and shatter-proof. Otherwise there goes my idea straight down the drain.

Credit: Pink Tentacle

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006 at 9:26pm and is filed under technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.