Lenses

Contact lenses get pretty thin nowadays, but they’ve got nothing on a new lens from scientists at Stanford and the University of Amsterdam. The team has created the world’s thinnest lens, measuring just three atoms thick.

Researchers have developed a flat lens that's one one-thousandth the thickness and one one-hundredth the weight of a conventional model.

Presbyopia is a common form of age-induced far-sightedness. Now a Stanford team has developed a pair of high-tech specs called autofocals, which use fluid-filled lenses, depth-sensing cameras and eye-tracking technology to make sure whatever a wearer is looking at stays sharp.

A team from the Swinburne University of Technology are developing a graphene microlens one billionth of a meter thick that can take sharper images of objects the size of a single bacterium

A new fully-adjustable synthetic eye lens from the University of Leeds, and made from liquid crystal, is designed to surgically replace long-sighted lenses in the human eye.

Two scientists at the University of Rochester have taken invisibility cloaking back to basics. Their novel arrangement of four standard, off-the-shelf lenses keeps an object hidden (and the background undisturbed) as the viewer moves up to several degrees away from the optimal viewing angle.

The US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has developed a smartphone attachment, that turns the phone into a 1,000x microscope. What's more, it's made from less than one dollar's worth of material.

Microscope lenses are typically made either by grinding and polishing glass discs, or pouring polymers into molds. Now, however, a scientist from Australian National University has devised a new lens-making process, in which drops of silicone are simply baked in an oven.

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have grown liquid crystal flowers, making it possible to create lenses as complex as the compound eye of a dragonfly. The technology could enable lenses to be grown on curved surfaces and building new materials, smart surfaces, microlens arrays, and more.

An experimental lens developed by scientists at Ohio State University that combines the wide angle properties of insect vision with the depth-of-field capabilities of a human eye could have wide ranging applications in devices such as microscopes and smartphone cameras.

When you feel you are outgrowing your starter model, buying a new telescope isn't the only option. Carefully selected of eyepieces can enhance your stargazing experience on an entry-level 4 to 6-inch telescope without blowing the budget.

Researchers have developed a telescopic contact lens with switchable magnification to assist people suffering from age-related macular degeneration.