We're no strangers to the futuristic catch-all idea of 'self-healing' -- it's one of the basic tent poles of many conceptions of tomorrow. That said, researchers are currently hard at work at Arizona State on a material that -- you guessed it -- can detect when it is damaged and, of course, heal itself. Though we sound a bit incredulous, the science is pretty simple here, and the progress on the project is very real. The material uses what the researchers are calling 'shape-memory' polymers and have a fiber optic network embedded within them which acts as the damage sensor as well as the heat delivery system. The polymers return to a pre-defined shape when
