Metal tubes stay afloat even after severe damage — opening the door to unsinkable ships

Metal tubes stay afloat even after severe damage — opening the door to unsinkable ships

More than a century after the RMS Titanic slipped beneath the Atlantic, engineers still chase the dream of ships that refuse to sink. At the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics, that goal now looks less like fantasy and more like physics. Chunlei Guo, a professor of optics and physics and a senior scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, leads a team that has found a way to make ordinary aluminum tubes float no matter what. Th…