Microsoft employees are reportedly testing a prototype smart watch constructed from aluminium oxynitride – an expensive material known as ‘transparent aluminium’ that’s three times harder than glass.
Technically a ceramic rather than a metal, transparent aluminium is stable at temperatures up to 1,200 °C and is so futuristic that its first public mention was in Star Trek, where a time-travelling plot saw the then-fictional 24th-century material traded with incredulous humans, circa 1980.
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