For those of you who haven't yet read the article, the cool thing about this new technology is that the material is not a solid plane, but an empty ring that allows air to pass through:
So, essentially, they invented a silencer/muffler?
Certainly interesting, but the applications of that would be somewhat niche.
To be specific, there are not that many scenarios where a solid wall won't do, but a honeycomb-like barrier is OK. Aesthetics are important, but musicians in a studio couldn't care less about how stuff looks as long as it works (and so do your musicians' neighbors).
One good application, as others have mentioned, is putting that thing around a fan, to minimize noise (a solid barrier defeats the purpose of a fan). I wonder what else would be a killer feature application of this kind of structure.
https://www.bu.edu/research/files/2019/02/acoustic-metamater...