Science is awesome!
It’s amazing when you consider how far science has advanced even in the last couple of years, but the idea of a see through metal just sounds like the stuff of science fiction. Now, thanks to the US NAVY, it’s science fact.
We can thank US Naval Research Laboratory scientist Dr. Jas Sanghera who described it as: “actually a mineral, it’s magnesium aluminate. The advantage is it’s so much tougher, stronger, harder than glass. It provides better protection in more hostile environments—so it can withstand sand and rain erosion.”
The applications are innumerable. We are talking about everything from more durable cell phone screens, to lighter airplanes and UAVs, even potentially revolutionizing things like bullet proof glass.
Here’s Sanghera’s description of the manufacturing process:
“You put the powder in [a hot press], you press it under vacuum, squash this powder together—and if you can do that right, then you can get rid of all the entrapped air, and all of a sudden it comes out of there clear-looking.”