this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
180 points (95.9% liked)
Technology
70249 readers
3293 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Maybe it's just my ADHD, but the article doesn't seem to be clear on something: do these contacts actually allow you to see into near-infrared as it exists, or do they merely shift the light into a spectrum we can see, the way cameras do? I'm hoping for the former, but I doubt we have the tech to allow us to see new colors simply by putting on a pair of contacts.
(Also, the mental image of scientists putting tiny little contact lenses on mice is hilarious to me.)
TL;DR from Wikipedia: In photon upconversion, two or more incident photons of relatively low energy are absorbed and converted into one emitted photon with higher energy.
Basically photons are combined into a photon that is nearer in wavelength to visible light.
Aww that's disappointing, but I'm not surprised. Otherwise we'd be using this tech to help colorblind people tell the difference between red and green.
It shifts the wavelength into the visible range, it doesn't grant you the ability to see new "colors". It's more like a translation into a color you already know.
Well that's a lame perk tree