[Politically Correct]

Coming to a cell phone near you

[Moonman62]

From the article:

Now that the meta-lenses built by Yu and his colleagues are approaching the performance of high-quality imaging lens sets, with much smaller weight and size, the team has another challenge: improving the lenses’ efficiency. The flat lenses currently are not optimal because a small fraction of the incident optical power is either reflected by the flat lens, or scattered into unwanted directions. The team is optimistic that the issue of efficiency is not fundamental, and they are busy inventing new design strategies to address the efficiency problem. They are also in talks with industry on further developing and licensing the technology.

...

The images in the video from this lens look terrible. This will probably never be commercialized which is why they are doing press releases instead of starting a company.

[Steely Tom]

Possibly a very big deal, but article says so far they’ve only made it work in the near infrared: 1.2 to 1.7 microns, which is somewhat less than the bandwidth of the visible spectrum.

Also they don’t give the “speed” (or “f-number”) of the lenses they’ve produced. If they can make f/2.8 or f/2, that would be revolutionary. If they’re at f/60 or f/120, they’re not much better than a pinhole camera.

Still, interesting, and potentially a game changer.

[Secret Agent Man]

Eyglasses will be changed.

[zeestephen]

Ping

[Windflier]

"The findings of the team, led by Nanfang Yu, associate professor of applied physics..."

Are there no longer any native born Americans in these positions?

Seems I never see western names associated with such articles anymore.

[blam]

"Only a micron thick, their revolutionary "flat" lens is much thinner than a sheet of paper and offers performance comparable to top-of-the-line compound lens systems."

The average Caucasian human hair is about 100 microns thick. This is 100 times smaller.(10,000 angstroms)

[minnesota_bound]

A camera placed anywhere to spy on you.