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by ibgames

EARTHDATE: February 5, 2017

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REAL LIFE NEWS: NIGHT VISION GLASSES COULD GET SMALLER

by Hazed

Night vision goggles let you see in the dark, but they are bulky and very conspicuous. Wouldn’t it be great if ordinary glasses could just turn to night vision as soon as it gets dark? Now researchers think that will be possible by using nanocrystals.

A team at the Australian National University in Canberra has developed nanocrystals which see directly into the infrared part of the spectrum. They are made of aluminium, gallium and arsenide. They are 500 times narrower than a human hair and can be applied to glass as an ultra-thin, lightweight film.

Each of the nanocrystals acts as an antenna, receiving and concentrating infrared heat radiation and turning it into visible light.

That’s only the first step: for night vision glasses, the crystals have to convert infrared radiation given off by warm bodies, which is trickier because it has a lower intensity than laser light.

Should the team succeed, the applications for the military are obvious, but they have also come up with other possible uses: such as playing night golf. Well, that's a boring suggestion. There must be more interesting things to do...

Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2116369-nanocrystal-night-vision-specs-will-let-you-see-in-infrared/

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