Transparent Aluminum Is Real. Star Trek Was Only Half Right

Subscribe to ⁨‪@VEIN.Materials‬ ⏱️ If this documentary was worth your time, consider buying me a coffee. Every coffee goes directly toward researching, writing, and producing the next story, so I can keep making documentaries like this. Thanks for watching, and for supporting independent storytelling. https://buymeacoffee.com/VEIN.Material Can a metal become see-through? This video explains how Star Trek IV's "transparent aluminum" compares with real science, from Faraday's gold leaf at the Royal Institution to Oxford's 2009 X-ray laser experiment in Hamburg. Metals are mirrors because of their electron sea, yet four methods have made them transparent, each more violent than the last. The video also shows that the transparent aluminum you can actually buy is a ceramic, not a metal. What's covered in this video Scotty trades the formula to Doctor Nichols at Plexicorp in San Francisco, 1986. Why the electron sea makes metals shiny, opaque and conductive. Faraday's 1856 gold leaf experiments and colloidal gold at the Royal Institution. Alkali metal films, René Blondlot's N-rays and Robert Wood's 1933 discovery. Super-Kamiokande's photomultiplier tubes. Sodium turned clear at two million atmospheres in Eremets's diamond anvil cell. Aluminum made transparent for 40 femtoseconds at the Flash laser. James McCauley's Alon ceramic and indium tin oxide touchscreens. 0:00 Scotty's Impossible Formula 4:42 Faraday's Glowing Green Gold 8:20 The Liquid Metal That Let Light Through 17:54 Inside a Mine Beneath Mount Ikeno 21:07 Squeezing Sodium Until It Turns Clear 25:40 Forty Femtoseconds of Invisible Aluminum 29:00 The Clear Aluminum You Can Buy