Before your imagination goes jumping around trying to figure out what you can actually do with a material that goes invisible, let me tell you that this has nothing to do with making stuff invisible and doing some sort of crazy thing to nab the bad guys or even be the bad guy. This is not about the fact that scientists have found a way through nanotechnology to make materials that completely absorb light with the negative refractive index that they have, but the fact that these materials actually have the potential to convert pure light energy in to heat energy to produce electric energy!
Collaboration between Boston College and Duke University has developed a metamaterial that might be slightly more useful to scientists and engineers. Their new metallic metamaterial absorbs light perfectly. The resonating materials can absorb both the electrical and magnetic properties of electromagnetic waves over a narrow frequency range, turning the light into heat. This means that while we can still not go invisible with this material, we can produce sustainded energy from it in the near future.
The fact that modern science and nanotechnology can produce energy not only from the already existing sources in a more efficient fashion, but can find new sources to produce energy is indeed exciting and holds vast potential for the future. With the magic of modern physics and some common sense, we can surely go green and clean with our energy needs.
