Sea Creature Provides Inspiration for Better Lenses

Frosty Inc. writes "BBC News has a story about a sea creature that may provide the key to improving the quality of optical lenses. Scientists are speculating that the study of this creature might lead to more than better cameras. They believe that this knowledge could be applied to optical fiber networks as well, greatly improving their efficiency and speed."

Comments

Wrong

[fredrikj]

They believe that this knowledge could be applied to optical fiber networks as well, greatly improving their efficiency and speed.

It's wrong to say that the speed can be improved, because it's obviously impossible to go faster than the speed of light. The bandwidth might of course still be improved though.

Re:Wrong

[dar]

Fiber only goes the speed of light until you hit the next junction box. I suspect they think they can improve the junction boxes.

Re:Details

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Bell Labs to get more details. The 'Perfect Lens' part refers to the fact that nature is reliably and repetitivly making defect free lenses.

Google to the rescue...

[Simon Field]

Doing a Google search for "Ophiocoma wendtii optical" came up with loads of articles about this, mostly similar, but some better than others.

A good one is from Physics Today.

Looking at the photomicrograph, you would never think "perfect lens". There are a bunch of bumps in a pretty random orientation. They can't be all focussing on the same spots.

While orienting the calcite crystals with the birefringent axis parallel to the optical axis so you don't get double images is a nice trick, Bell Labs is not going to be making their lenses from burefringent materials, so that trick won't be much use to them.

The other trick, using the "double-lens shape that closely resembles the shapes proposed in the 17th century by Descartes and Huygens to minimize spherical aberrations" is also nice, it would seem we have known how to do that for some time. (Aren't those two guys getting kind of old?)

I would speculate that the critter builds the lenses, and then the nerve cells and photosensitive pigments migrate to where the lens focuses the light. It might also modify the lenses as they grow, using feedback from the nerve cells. Perhaps Bell Labs can use similar feedback to get their optics the way they want them.

Aside from light gathering, it looks to me like this trick can work backwards also. You can economize on pigment containing cells by placing them only at the focus of the lenses. Now you can camouflage yourself by changing only those small spots to match your environment.