As promised in Star Trek IV…
http://www.physorg.com/news167925273.html
RMT
Let me guess, your first thought was to get that replica suit of armor you’ve always wanted?
(Emperor’s new clothes? 
)
The article states that the aluminum became transparent to extreme UV light, which wouldn’t affect human perception even if it was a macroscopic quantity of metal (and it wasn’t). Further, it’s neither a new state of matter nor long-lived. Look up Auger electrons.
Also try:
* transparent aluminum glass,
* More…
Transparent Aluminum - News Results
* Researchers Take a Step Forward in the Development of Transparent Aluminum AnandTech - 6 minutes ago
* Transparent Aluminum Is “New State of Matter” Slashdot - 4 hours ago
* Transparent Aluminum Is ‘New State Of Matter’ Science Daily - Jul 27 11:25am
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Search results
- List of Star Trek materials - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
* Metals for…|
* Energy sources|
* Precious…|
* See also
Transparent aluminum at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki) … Leucoemeraldine, ‘Leucoemeraldine’ - real world equivalent of ’ Transparent Aluminum’ …
List of Star Trek materials - Wikipedia - Cached - Military: New Aluminum Windows Stop .50-Caliber Bullet | LiveScience
In a test this summer, the product held up to a .50-caliber sniper’s rifle with … A new type of transparent armor made of aluminum could one day replace glass in …
www.livescience.com/technology/051018_new_glass.html - Cached - Transparent aluminum - Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki
A 1-inch thick sheet of transparent aluminum, measuring 60’ x 10’, is capable of … Transparent aluminum is a construction material much stronger and much lighter …
memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Transparent_aluminum - Cached - Air Force testing new transparent armor
… Engineers here are testing a new kind of transparent armor – stronger and lighter than traditional materials – that … testing aluminum oxynitride …
www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123012131 - Cached
Good feedback! Thanks. I didn’t read the whole thing before I posted here, so I am not surprised.
RMT
You do realize it was a ‘debunker’ that informed me Santa wasn’t ‘real’ either 
^^
What’s wrong with preliminary fun?
On a serious note, I imagine these applications will have a great impact.
(So to make the it transparent you need extreme UV light? aka the window application? I always thought RMT wanted to wear his armor at the beach )
Go ahead, rip me ^^
The reason they call it a new form of matter is probably because all the atoms would have an inner electron removed at once, instead of only a few. Still though, I think it was a stretch for them to declare it fundamentally new. I have thought of exciting all electrons in a group of atoms in order to prevent absorption of incoming photons, thereby possibly rendering the object invisible. However, the excited state is likely to be short lived and result instead in the emission of the atoms’ full spectrum of light.
Captain, thar be whales.
Why not just make an enclosure out of the already treated ‘aluminum’ that performs the function of the UV ?
Angleo,
If you’re asking relative to the experiment in the above article it’s not very practicle. The effect lasted ~1 fetmosecond (one millionth of a nanosecond) and the UV was actually soft x-ray photons shot from an x-ray laser.
Poor Scotty’s whales in the Enterprise’s aquarium might not like having the crew view them by shooting a hard gamma ray laser through the aluminum walls. And I’m sure that the EPA would have a cow (or is that whale?) over it. 
aha, didn’t read the details - media forgets that sometimes???
Excellent point! Most ofthe articles that we see are written by people with no technical skills, thus their take on the interview behind the article tends to make no sense. Reading the scientist’s papers on sites like ArXiv/LanL makes a lot more sense if you have some background in the science involved. You might not understand all ofthe minutia but you can at least see the basics of what the experimnter intended rather that some hack’s pop-sci mentality editorialization.
The article referenced on this thread is exciting - it really is. There are applications for this technology and someday there could be everyday applications for it. But hard gamma ray radiation to make aluminum transparent to the naked eye isn’t very parctical.
But someday…
I think I see what you’re saying - proof in a new method may lead one day to further advanced/refined methods that make the ‘impractical’ - ‘practical’ in terms of useful application ?
Sure. Have you ever seen the first transistor built? It was big and awkward but they polished the design and miniaturized it. Now look.
Historical foundations are amazing.
I found it astounding Baghdad had a copper battery from Babylonian times.
(The Antikythera mechanism is perhaps a little more interesting for date significance I admit).