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Nanotechnology Makes It Possible For Mice To See In Infrared (sciencedaily.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceDaily: Humans and other mammals are limited to seeing a range of wavelengths of light called visible light, which includes the wavelengths of the rainbow. But infrared radiation, which has a longer wavelength, is all around us. People, animals and objects emit infrared light as they give off heat, and objects can also reflect infrared light. A multidisciplinary group of scientists led by Xue and Jin Bao at the University of Science and Technology of China as well as Gang Han at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, developed the nanotechnology to work with the eye's existing structures.
In this study, the scientists made nanoparticles that can anchor tightly to photoreceptor cells and act as tiny infrared light transducers. When infrared light hits the retina, the nanoparticles capture the longer infrared wavelengths and emit shorter wavelengths within the visible light range. The nearby rod or cone then absorbs the shorter wavelength and sends a normal signal to the brain, as if visible light had hit the retina. "In our experiment, nanoparticles absorbed infrared light around 980 nm in wavelength and converted it into light peaked at 535 nm, which made the infrared light appear as the color green," said one of the researchers. The researchers tested the nanoparticles in mice, which, like humans, cannot see infrared naturally. Mice that received the injections showed unconscious physical signs that they were detecting infrared light, such as their pupils constricting, while mice injected with only the buffer solution didn't respond to infrared light. The study was published in the journal Cell.
In this study, the scientists made nanoparticles that can anchor tightly to photoreceptor cells and act as tiny infrared light transducers. When infrared light hits the retina, the nanoparticles capture the longer infrared wavelengths and emit shorter wavelengths within the visible light range. The nearby rod or cone then absorbs the shorter wavelength and sends a normal signal to the brain, as if visible light had hit the retina. "In our experiment, nanoparticles absorbed infrared light around 980 nm in wavelength and converted it into light peaked at 535 nm, which made the infrared light appear as the color green," said one of the researchers. The researchers tested the nanoparticles in mice, which, like humans, cannot see infrared naturally. Mice that received the injections showed unconscious physical signs that they were detecting infrared light, such as their pupils constricting, while mice injected with only the buffer solution didn't respond to infrared light. The study was published in the journal Cell.
I have to admit, that I am a long way from being ready to inject anything in my eyes.
However, I really really hope that some brave transhumanists chomping at the bit to be able to use this new technique on themselves, are allowed to do so - it would give us invaluable data on how well this worked, and also on any long term side effects so that some day anyone could choose to do this really cool body mod with relative confidence in success and safety.
It sounds like the effect would be really cool, I wonder if normal daytime viewing would appear over-bright though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Injecting mice in the eyes so that they may or may not be able to see infrared? Of all the career choices...
So, the mice got a "shine job". Did they pay for the surgery in cigarettes?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Stop giving the animals super powers you fools!!!
I think we should do an idiotectomy possibly by acidifying this coward...
is it staring at my private plasma aura? yuk, impersonating an altered mouse again i see..
You know her name isn't Kendall right?
that's us? pretending we cannot feel it leads to even further discomfort? cease fire stand down, there's mothers & children in every town..
Nanomachines, son!
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Aw.. I was hoping for some kind of new synthetic cone and novel qualia to go with it :
Troll his troll comments if you hate him. The vin diesel one was as topical as the parent.
This nanotech treatment could make your eyeballs ITAR restricted items:
https://www.flir.com/support-c...
This would increase your eye's IR sensitivity in any light condition for objects warmer or cooler than ambient.
Hot things would look green, cold things would look... less green.
Pilots looking at a primary flight display would hate this. Tritium reticles might also get hard to see.
Uniformed personnel, despite all looking identical from a few hundred yards away, sweat very differently based on gender, mostly due to undergarments beneath the uniform. IR reveals things that would be impossible to notice with visible light, in bright daylight or in the dark.
I would never get this nanotech treatment. I'd get distracted and walk into a light pole.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8n6RJsFj3M
Jack: Where the hell can I get eyes like that?
Riddick: Gotta kill a few people.
Jack: 'Kay, I can do it.
Riddick: Then you got to get sent to a slam, where they tell you you'll never see daylight again. You dig up a doctor, and you pay him 20 menthol Kools to do a surgical shine job on your eyeballs.
Jack: So you can see who's sneaking up on you in the dark?
Riddick: Exactly.
I wonder if this study is completely useless, what if what they injected into the eyes caused the dilation, and not the exposure to light itself?
Also, SuperKendall sucks.
This would increase your eye's IR sensitivity in any light condition for objects warmer or cooler than ambient.
Not really. 980 nm is near IR, which really doesn't vary much by temperature and is easily blocked. FLIR cameras see medium/far IR (3K nm and up), which punches through obstructions like fog, and is what you need to see something warmer/cooler stand out.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
If you do that, you never have dark again, because you effectively cannot close your eyes.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to take out the target at 250 yards from a protected location.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Maybe some goggles with cameras and a screen for each eye could do the same thing?
Hot things would look green, cold things would look... less green.
Could that also mean that some green things no longer stand out, so you would become a bit colour blind?
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
I was wondering how the sharks were going to aim their lasers at night.
Mice with glowing red eyes.
Cool.
I would never get this nanotech treatment.
I certainly wouldn't "as-is" either, but I can't help but wonder the extent this could be a component in a more complex and useful system.
The bulk atom construction of these particular particles likely makes them somewhat fixed in their light converting range, which is fine for in the lab and all, but I wonder what types of ranges are possible.
Just how far can particles of this size stretch or squish a light wave? What wavelengths can be brought up or down into the visible range?
After perfecting the effect I'd wonder what sorts of materials could be constructed that are adjustable, perhaps with a specific RF or electric field or something like that.
Especially if they only respond and change to *very* near by fields, say within or just outside of the eye.
Imagine a "sliding window" of frequencies that can be brought into the visible range under the control of an implant installed near to the eyes you can control.
Predator vision without the helmet!
If that was perfected I wouldn't at all mind such a treatment. Of course that wouldn't be within my life time, so may as well be 'never'. :P (aww, now I made myself sad)
Perhaps Ray Kurzweil turns out to be correct against all odds
I wish journalists would show a little more rigor. This is biochemistry, not nanotechnology.
The tem "nanotechnology" was coined to describe building things atom-by-atom, i.e. nanoassemblers. Just making things on the nanoscale is not nanotech.
I imagine the nanoparticles could be used on a digital camera sensor to simulate the effect.
Most digital camera sensors already can see in the infrared spectrum. They just add filters to limit what is recorded to the visual spectrum. Your smartphone can probably do it. Here's how to show it. Turn on your smartphone camera and grab your TV remote control. Point the remote at the camera and start pushing buttons. You should see the (normally invisible) light from your remote on screen.
Fun fact, you can get a modification to your DSLR camera to remove the IR and UV spectrum filters (called a full spectrum conversion. You can do some really cool photography this way.
You cannot simply shorten the wavelenth passively. The opposite is true: there are luminophores that absorb shorter wavelength and emit longer effectively multiplying the number of photons that increases the entropy so there is nothing termodynamically to forbid it. But you cannot do the opposite. In fact, all night vision are active and need energy source and that energy is dissipated in the process.
Waiting for 'potion of infravision' to show up on shelves next to monster and NOS.
I work in a highly related field. All the time I get asked about extending the sensitivity of our visual system in cool, biotech-y ways.
My standard response is: buy the appropriate glasses / goggles / binoculars / telescope / microscope / filter and leave your biology intact. We're much, much better at designing desk-sized microscopes than we are at making ones that fit inside your eye somehow. We are much, much better at designing low-vision assistance devices that can read signs out loud (like your cell phone) than we are at making implants to restore sight (at least for now). And, for this case, we're much, much better at making night-vision scopes that make you look cool when you wear them than we are at injecting nanoparticles into your eyes in a procedure that has a non-trivial chance of rendering you blind.
Pure electro-mechanical technology in the form of a wearable or external device of some sort is far, far more advanced than biotechnology right now. And it, generally speaking, is reversible, something none of the current generation of biological approaches have.
Should we continue research on this sort of thing? Oh, yes, definitely! But don't think about using it, yet. Not for a long while.
It all boils down to the observation: just because you CAN do something (create IR-sensitive vision by injecting nanoparticles in your eyes) does not mean you SHOULD do it, and that there are not any vastly better alternatives.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Call me when I will be able to shoot lasers out of my eyes
I'm pretty sure this how Riddick got his eyeballs I wants me a pair of dem please.
What makes you think it wouldn't be in your lifetime? Medical technology is a quickly advancing field and there are a lot of cool things available today that would have been science fiction in the 90's. We laymen just don't hear about it all the time and when we do its usually overly sensationalized or described so inaccurately that it is completely wrong.
You need to die.
Near infra-red makes it to the retina, but far infra-red doesn't make it through the cornea. With this tech, you could see in the dark with in IR light source, but you won't see thermal IR.
Most of the night vision stuff relies on shining an IR beam to light up the scene. That is, it's basically an IR flashlight and camera. That's fine for security cameras, where you're always shooting the same area at a fixed distance. It doesn't work so well when the distance will vary or if you need to shoot at extreme distances. FLIR seems to be the only company making passive IR cameras.
I took a look at some of FLIR's offerings (for operating a boat at night). A passive IR camera with an 80x60 pixel sensor costs $500. Higher resolution systems cost thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. I agree with your caution against tinkering with your biology. But the equivalent electro-mechanical systems are incredibly expensive, creating a huge financial opportunity if they can make this safe.
How do the mice SLEEP?
Does someone have to put little ice cubes on their eyeballs? Or do they just learn to ignore the light they can no longer escape? (I have a sneaking suspicion that ambient warmth from blood in eyelids would mean seeing blurry lines even in total darkness, with eyes closed. This is probably not a really, especially good idea. It'd be like having surgery normally performed to remove cataracts, just to be able to see UV light. It's great until the UV light that used to be stopped before it reached them destroys your retinas, and then you can't see anything. Poor mice...
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
All correct and I'd mod you up if I could.
Let's hope these nano particles can be tuned.
If realized, this tech is somewhere between a Geordi La Forge visor and a dystopian Neal Stephenson sub plot.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
Humans and other mammals are limited to seeing a range of wavelengths of light called visible light
No shit. I better update Wikipedia, stat.
From the summary Infra-red shows up as green for the mice; so presumably the mice lost colour depth perception
The rest of the colors should be visible normally - all that happens is that some infra-red wavelengths are transformed into green light the eye can see. Normal wavelengths would not be altered.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley