What’s as strong as steel, as light as aluminum, and capable of withstanding ballistic impact, fire, and radiation? Metal foam. Over a decade ago, engineer Afsaneh Rabiei of North Carolina State University invented Composite Metal Foam (CMF)—a material made of hollow metal “bubbles” embedded in steel, titanium, aluminum, or other alloys. From air and space […]
Caltech’s Lightsail Experiment Brings Interstellar Travel Closer to Reality
A team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology devised a means of measuring the thin membranes of a lightsail, helping prove out a futuristic travel concept first imagined by Johannes Kepler over 400 years ago. The team’s research, published this month in Nature Photonics, describes a miniature lightsail in a laboratory setting. The […]