Aluminium glass? Am I the only person who remembers that Star Trek IV (the one with the whales) made a bid deal about "transparent aluminium"? Beam me to the future!

] Scientists in the US have developed a novel technique to
] make bulk quantities of glass from alumina for the first
] time. Anatoly Rosenflanz and colleagues at 3M in
] Minnesota used a "flame-spray" technique to alloy alumina
] (aluminium oxide) with rare-earth metal oxides to produce
] strong glass with good optical properties. The method
] avoids many of the problems encountered in conventional
] glass forming and could, say the team, be extended to
] other oxides (A Rosenflanz et al. 2004 Nature 430 761).

[ Cool... -k]

PhysicsWeb - Glass breakthrough