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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday December 08 2016, @09:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the but-don't-look-into-the-light dept.

Night vision goggles do a great job of countering the human eye's poor ability to see in the dark, but the devices are usually bulky, requiring several layers of lenses and plenty of power. But thanks to research from the Australian National University (ANU), a new type of nanocrystal could grant night vision powers to a standard pair of specs, without adding any weight.

Darkness, as we perceive it, is the absence of light on the visible spectrum that our eyes can detect, but there's still plenty of light at other frequencies that we can't use. Night vision goggles make use of the near-infrared spectrum, and convert the photons from that light into electrons that light up a phosphor screen inside the device to create the image. But all that makes for a chunky, power-hungry device.

The ANU team's nanocrystal can be used to create night vision devices that forgo electricity completely, by converting incoming photons from infrared light into other photons on the visible spectrum, to allow the human eye to see in the dark.


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  • (Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Thursday December 08 2016, @09:21PM

    by JeanCroix (573) on Thursday December 08 2016, @09:21PM (#438874)
    That still doesn't really help much for moving infrared light to the visible spectrum, though. The upper edge of infrared is just below 400 THz. Doubling that to 800 THz puts it into the low ultraviolet range, which is still non-visible to human eyes.
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