They could have some highly practical applications.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have created glasses that give their wearer a superhuman ability to distinguish similar colors.
Colors that look the same to the human eye but actually are of different wavelengths are known as metamers, New Scientist explains.
Physicist Mikhail Kats and colleagues “designed two colour filters, one for each eye that strip out specific parts of the blue light spectrum,” according to the website.
“With each eye receiving slightly different spectral information about blue things, the team hypothesised that any subtle differences in colour would be more pronounced,” New Scientist explains.
Advertisement
The results were striking. While wearing the glasses, people had no trouble at all telling apart extremely similar colors. The Daily Mail reports that the technology allows wearers to distinguish “a much wider array of blues, violets, and purples.”
The technology could be good for a lot more than just impressing your friends. It could come in handy for applications such as detecting counterfeit money and identifying fruit that is on the verge of going bad, New Scientist and the Daily Mail report.
Read more at New Scientist
