Circa 2008
Okay, so no one has quite perfected laser weapons yet, but that doesn’t mean you can’t at least think about possible defenses. Naval researchers are looking at materials that could deflect high-powered lasers, reports Discovery:
“If you have a ship being hit by a laser, and it was made of this metamaterial, you could reflect the laser beam,” said Simin Feng, one of the study co-authors and a researcher at China Lake.
Unlike normal materials, which derive their properties largely from the chemicals that comprise them, metamaterials are artificially made materials that get their properties from their physical structures.
The material Feng and her co-author Klaus Halterman, also of China Lake, have theorized would be made of three layers of conventional materials, with the metamaterials sandwiched between the three layers. Since the material would be thin it should be easily applied and “wouldn’t weigh things down,” said Halterman.
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