BELLEVUE, Wash. — Plastics. Computers. Metamaterials?
Almost half a century after Dustin Hoffman was taken aside in “The Graduate” and given the famous “one word” line about the future, it may be time to update the script again. And metamaterials appear to have the same potential to transform entire industries. Over the past 15 years or so, scientists have learned how to construct materials that bend light waves, as well as radar, radio, sound and even seismic waves, in ways that do not naturally occur.
Image: Eben Frankenberg and Tom Driscoll of Echodyne with a prototype radar in a test chamber. Credit Kyle Johnson for The New York Times
