Transparent Aluminum

This seems like a breakthrough - in a sort of Tom Swiftian way.

From Science Daily:

''What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,’ said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, one of the authors of the paper. ‘Transparent aluminium is just the start.'

Whilst the invisible effect lasted for only an extremely brief period – an estimated 40 femtoseconds – it demonstrates that such an exotic state of matter can be created using very high power X-ray sources.

40 Femtoseconds. That would be 40 one millionths of a nanosecond. So far so good.