There may be new hope for people with noisy neighbors. Scientists at MIT have developed a method of using thin sheets of fabric to either cancel or block sound – in the latter case, the racket even ...

Researchers developed a silk fabric, which is barely thicker than a human hair, that can suppress unwanted noise and reduce noise transmission in a large room. We are living in a very noisy world.

The fabric can suppress sound by generating sound waves that interfere with an unwanted noise to cancel it out (as seen in figure C) or by being held still to suppress vibrations that are key to the ...