Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Igor Smolyaninov, Yu-Ju Hung, and Christopher Davis at Maryland University, US, created a "superlens", which refracts light I unconventional ways. This method allows an optical microscope to see beyond the normal limit of its vision. In mind researchers have hope to develp a cheaper mass produced version of it, in or der to uprade the microscopes used in research laboratories. The difference between the optical lenses and light waves is that optical lenses can only resolve details down to those that are half the wavelength of light in size. By the way, lenses are made from an arrangement of concentric plastic rings, spaced about 500 nanometres apart, on the top of a gold surface.