This is great news. This should be great for astronomy too.

Real progress can be made when you recognize structure.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36438686

 

We've known the power of meta-material structures for decades but are just now becoming able to create visible spectrum practical devices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Veselago

His first paper was "The Electrodynamics of Substances with Simultaneously Negative Values of ε and μ". Up to this point,refractive index was traditionally regarded as having only positive values. In this paper he was able to show that refractive index may also be negative. He hypothesized that negative refraction can occur if both the (electric) permittivity and themagnetic permeability of a material are negative. This prediction was confirmed 33 years later when David Smith et al., created a composite material with negative refractive index, and Sir John Pendry showed that the planar lens proposed by Veselago can indeed provide greatly improved resolution.[1][4]

http://physics.bu.edu/~redner/482/13/averitt-slides.pdf

 

This is great news. This should be great for astronomy too.
Real progress can be made when you recognize structure.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36438686

Excellent! I am eager to get my next pair of glasses without the lenses being thicker than 5mm.
Where should I send the prescription?

 

Hilarious:

"Shapes on the surface of this lens are smaller than the wavelength of light involved: a thousandth of a millimetre."

 

Hilarious:

"Shapes on the surface of this lens are smaller than the wavelength of light involved: a thousandth of a millimetre."

At the bottom of the article it notes that they previously worked with infrared, so that might be were that figure comes from. You can always count on a reporter to get the facts wrong.