Scientists at Oxford University have reportedly created a new kind of aluminum by bombarding ordinary aluminum with emissions from the world's most powerful "soft" x-ray laser.

An international team led by Oxford University scientists Professor Justin Wark, Dr Bob Nagler, Dr Gianluca Gregori, William Murphy, Sam Vinko and Thomas Whitcher have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. 'Transparent aluminium' previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion. According to the journal Nature Physics, the emmisions eliminated a cored electron from each aluminum atom (remember, aluminum is an element), without altering the element's essential crystalline structure. Consequently, the bombarded aluminum is almost invisible to extreme degrees of ultraviolet radiation, but only for exceedingly brief amounts of time—so brief that it's not human perceivable in ordinary ways.

The research is still very much a matter of a small step in a very long journey, but it suggests all sorts of possibilities in terms of understanding basic atomic structures. The research was reported in the journal Nature Physics. There's a brief summary in laymen's language here.