Great! Now we can have that transparent aluminum Scotty talked about. Or at least nanophase aluminum.
How about this stuff now?
A ceramic research lab in Dresden, Germany, has developed transparent Alumina by subjecting fine-grained (I'm guessing extremely fine-grained) aluminum to a whopping 1200 degrees Celsius ...the result of which is amazingly light but three times tougher than hardened steel of the same thickness, and it's see-through.
http://www.rense.com/general20/transparentalum.htm
DK