this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024

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Night-vision lenses so thin and light that we can all see in the dark (newatlas.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Instead, TMOS researchers used metasurface-based upconversion technology, which essentially provides an easier pathway for light photons to be processed. The photons travel through a resonant metasurface, where they mingle with a pump beam. The non-local lithium niobate metasurface boosts the energy of the photons, and draws them into the visible light spectrum without the need to convert them to electrons first. It also doesn't require cryogenic cooling – which reduces 'noise' for sharper images in traditional night vision – so can do away with even more of the bulky night-vision goggle mechanics.

This reads like a Turbo Encabulator script.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The only quirky word in there is metasurface

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

Depends on your scientific familiarity. Also, part of the turbo encabulator script is that most of the words are not odd, it's how they're joined which is odd.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"From evening drives" Bad enough dealing with modern headlights with normal eyes

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Do modern headlights emit IR? I don't think so. Which means these IR amplifiers wouldn't change the intensity of headlights.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

IR is heat, so headlights produce a a lot of IR. Laser headlights emit less IR with the visible light, but radiate heat.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Well, IR isn't heat, but it's associated with it. And since laser and LED lights heat up a little bit, yes, they of course produce a miniscule amount of IR. But it's pretty much negligible in comparison to their visible spectrum emissions. If you're already being blinded by the visible range of the laser, the IR part isn't gonna do much.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You asked if headlights emit IR because you didn't think they do, they emit IR.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Fair enough, I was being too vague with my statement. I was implying that they don't emit much IR, as all bodies above 0 Kelvin do emit it. And LED/laser headlights almost don't, in comparison to xenon and stuff. I looked up some Xe emission graphs and some even straight up show the peak in near-IR, while laser/LED starts flatting out way before NIR.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Touché

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Now that I've read my own comment, I see that it came off harsher then I intended it to. Interpret it literally and not like a sarcastic statement.

Btw, just occurred to me that these would probably not work in a car at all, because regular glass is usually opaque to IR.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

because regular glass is usually opaque to IR.

I'm almost 100% positive that this is not correct, because I've been driven around by someone wearing PVS-14 NODs with no headlights, on dirt roads, in a commercial van. (Edit - most red dot sights also work very well with NODs, and those have one or two layers of glass, depending on which type of system it is. The sights that don't work well usually can't dim the dot enough to avoid massive bloom.) Glass is mostly opaque to thermal though, and a lot of glass significantly reduces UV.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I can't say I have any experience with PVS-14 or any Night Optical Devices, but from what I see online, it amplifies certain visible spectrum as well as near-IR. It doesn't seem to rely on IR much. And red dot sights aren't even IR are they? At least not entirely, cause you can see them with the naked eye.
Regarding glass being opaque to IR, apparently, it depends on the type of glass. I just remembered it from a Vsauce video (IIRC) where it was demonstrated to be opaque. But since term IR is vague and doesn't have super defined borders, and there are different types of glass, yeah, it's not a certain statement.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Okay, so you're talking about the IR that most people would refer to as thermal, rather than the IR that's technically NIR, and is used in most image intensification. My mistake; as you say, these things get slippery because most of the time people aren't talking about specific wavelengths and frequencies.

Yes, IR-as-in-thermal is going to be stopped by most glass. IR-as-in-NIR-for-NODs is not. The IR lasers and weapon lights that show up very well with NODs are definitely not visible to the naked human eye, so they're outside of the visible light spectrum, and get generally labeled as IR, even if they're outside of the spectrum of IR that's used by most thermal optics. (It would be interesting to see if a Steiner DBAL could illuminate an area that had low IR for a FLIR camera.) And yes, for that, a red dot sight will work, because it will be set to very, very dim; too dim to be seen by the naked eye.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I'm sorry if I made the false impression that I know what I'm talking about. I'm just discussing and learning as I go. But I went back to the article and looked for the specific figures, and you were right, they are amplifying 1550-nm wavelength, which is NIR. And average glass is usually opaque to wavelength at around 2500nm, so it shouldn't get blocked. At least not much.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The material captures visible light too, so headlights would be brighter, but I wonder if there's a way to reduce the contrast by either filtering out some wavelengths (like driving glasses) or the material simply not boosting it's output past a certain level?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

If I understood correctly, it captures visible light to use it for the amplification of the IR spectrum.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The article says:

The photons travel through a resonant metasurface, where they mingle with a pump beam.

From that, I think it's suggesting it needs a separate beam of photons to amplify the signal, much like a transistor needs a supply current to amplify the signal it gets.

They also say:

This new tech also captures the visible and non-visible (or infrared) light in one image as you look through the 'lens.'

Which sounds like it produces an image showing both the IR and visible spectrum in the visible range.

Mind you, re-readind it, most of the article just talks about IR, so I'm not certain what it's actually doing. It could just be transparent to the visible spectrum. It wouldn't be much good for driving if it did that though, the windscreen blocks a lot of IR and you'd need IR headlights!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Yeah, it's absolutely clear that nothing is clear about its operation.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 5 months ago (3 children)

This isn't really night vision in the typical sense. It's an Infrared camera in a thin package.

Also Military night vision is described wrong. The photon doubled is quite small. The problem is that afterwards the image needs to be turned again. That is done with fiberoptics. Those take the amount of space.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago (2 children)

“This is the first demonstration of high resolution up-conversion imaging from 1550-nm infrared to visible 550-nm light in a non-local metasurface," said author Rocio Camacho Morales. "We choose these wavelengths because 1,550 nm, an infrared light, is commonly used for telecommunications, and 550 nm is visible light to which human eyes are highly sensitive. Future research will include expanding the range of wavelengths the device is sensitive to, aiming to obtain broadband IR imaging, as well as exploring image processing, including edge detection.”

That does not sound like an Infrared camera.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

You're right, there is no capture or recording of light in this system. Electromagnetic metasurfaces directly alter the waveform of photons as they pass through. In this instance it directly converts infrared light into visible 550nm (green) light.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Surly there is a lenses that flips images upside down. Have we tried just training people to deal with upside down surly it doesnt take too long for the brain to adapt.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It doesn't. I recall an experiment a few decades ago where they turned the world upside down. Didn't take participants long to "normalise" the image.

When they removed the experiment, took even shorter to flip back.

I seem to recall it being done in a train carriage, as art, but I'm not sure.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Huh guess a bit more training and u can totally remove the fibre optic flipping which if i recall correctly is the most expensive part.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The soldiers just have to wear the goggles all the time, or they'll see upside down for several minutes.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago

Surly u can adapt to the change given enough practice.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

The device captures visible and infrared light, just like a typical night vision scope. They're working on expanding the spectrum too, which could lead to some interesting and useful results. I understand that, for instance, skin cancers are more visible under certain UV wavelengths, so imagine a doctor being able to just put on a pair of glasses that convert that wavelength to give you a once over during a checkup.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 5 months ago

Can't wait to add this to my transitions blue light filter colour blind prescription smart glasses.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago (2 children)

First: I'll believe it when I see it. Every so often pie-in-the-sky claims of this type come out, and they often end up not being feasible, even if they're technically possible.

Second: if it is feasible, given that gen 3 night vision tubes have remained stubbornly expensive, I would not expect this to be cheap for a long time.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

Who knows. Some tech is both better functionally and cheaper. We'll see. No need to hype anyway.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

iirc the way night vision currently works the actual amplifying part is incredibly thin and more than 90% of the thickness is post amplification cleanup.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I'm pretty sure you're correct, although I believe that the part that's capturing photons also needs to be heavily protected from the environment, and you also need something to prevent to many photons from getting to it and burning it out (e.g., almost all gen 3 NODs are autogated so that someone shining a flashlight at you won't wreck your image intensifier tubes.)

It's one of those things that can get pretty overwhelming to try and research as a consumer, because it gets really technical really fast.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

I don't have much to contribute to the technical discussion here, just my comment that even playing with kids toy night vision goggles is awesome. For about $100 you can buy a really fun toy to play around with. Gets boring quickly, but kids might have fun with it longer.