As the whiskers bent, circuits on the chip would light up pixels on a monitor screen, and you'd be able to see in total darkness. They would be as sensitive as the infrared sensors used in astronomers' telescopes, but they wouldn't have to be cooled in liquid nitrogen. So far Thundat and colleagues have managed to make infrared images by painstakingly moving the tip of an atomic microscope across the focal plane of a lens. Eventually, Thundat says, this technology will make its way into diagnostic medical instruments, security-system cameras, or night scopes for cars. Michael J. Buckingham An array of hydrophones.
Oceans are dark because water transmits light poorly.
But water conducts sound easily for miles. Sending out a sonar signal is like turning on a headlight. You see only what the beam sweeps across. But meanwhile the ocean's ambient noise is bouncing off everything underwater, like the ambient daylight our eyes can interpret. Fellow researchers greeted it not so much with skepticism as with silence.