A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst recently announced in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they have succeeded in creating a new rubber-like solid substance capable of absorbing and releasing very large amounts of energy. And it is amenable to programming.

Taken together, this new material holds great promise for applications ranging from creating robots with more power without using additional energy to new helmets and protective materials that can dissipate energy much faster, the authors of the paper claim.

Alfred Crosby, professor of polymer science and engineering at UMass Amherst and senior author of the paper says, “Imagine a super-rubber. When you stretch it to a certain limit, you activate the extra energy stored in the material. When you let go of that rubber band, it travels a whole mile.” Their material will be made from a new metamaterial – a substance designed to have properties not found in naturally occurring materials – that combines an elastic, rubber-like substance with tiny magnets embedded in it. This new “elastomagnetic” material takes advantage of the laws of physics to greatly increase the amount of energy the material can release or absorb.