Words Marvi Torres
Whoever thought that bigger eyes would make the Big Bad Wolf see Little Red better haven't any idea what the science guys over at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are capable of. It's not a new pair of glasses or Lasik surgery either-it's the new and sophisticated optical system of optical fibers in a mesh, developed by Professor Yoel Fink and his team, from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Research Lab of Electronics.
The new optical wonder involves a mesh of photo-detecting fibers that are fashioned into a sphere. Individual fibers are about one millimeter in diameter. For each fiber, a transparent polymer insulator houses the photoconductive glass core with metal electrodes running along its length. Light can be detected anywhere along this length, signaled by a change in current in the external electrical circuit.
A single fiber cannot pinpoint the location of an incoming beam, but a web of fibers can determine a single point of intersection, which is the light beam's origin. The coordinates are communicated to a computer, and the output is translated for the user.
The MIT team also created a pair of two-dimensional fiber webs in parallel.
The model was capable of measuring light intensity and replicating an image placed near it. A computer screen successfully reconstructed a stenciled letter 'E' lit from behind. The fiber webs measured the light intensity distribution around the letter.
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