Silvered nano- shard lets light fly

摘要

A nano-sozed bar of glass encased in silver allows visible light to pass through at near-infinite speed. The technique may spur advances in optical computing. Metamaterials are synthetic materials with properties not found in nature. Metal and glass have been combined in previous metamaterials to bend light backwards or to make invisibility cloaks. These materials achieve their bizarre effects by manipulating the refractive index, a measure of how much a substance alters light's course and speed. In a vacuum the refractive index is 1. and normal materials have positive indices. Ordinary glass is about 1.5.