A Mexican Physicist Solved a 2,000-Year Old Problem That Will Lead to Cheaper, Sharper Lenses

It ’s a job that beset even the priciest of lenses , manufactured to the most exacting specifications : the center of the shape might be razor - knifelike , but the corner and edges always look a little soft . It ’s a trouble that ’s existed for 1000 of yr with optical gadget , and one that wasassumed to be unsolvableuntil aMexican physicist developed a mind - melting formulathat could revolutionize how lenses are fabricate .

On composition , a curved glass lens should be capable to airt all the rays of light passing through it onto a single aim known as its focal power point . But in the actual world , it just does n’t make that manner . Differences in deflexion across the lens , as well as imperfections in its form and material , all chip in to some of those faint shaft of light , peculiarly those entering the lens near its outer border , missing the target . It ’s a phenomenon known as spherical deviance , and it ’s a trouble that even Isaac Newton and Greek mathematician Diocles could n’t check .

New betterment in design and fabrication , including the enjoyment of extra aspherical lenses that can serve countercheck and chastise the spheric aberration effect , mean today ’s lens system - build technique come very close to producing uniformly piercing images . These lenses do n’t have a perfectly spherical shape and can be very expensive and difficult to manufacture and excogitation as lense makers fundamentally have to try out and come up with a different aspherical human body for every app .

Photo: Sam Rutherford (Gizmodo)

But that ’s all going to change thanks to Rafael G. González - Acuña , a doctoral pupil at Mexico ’s Tecnológico de Monterrey . After months of oeuvre , he managed to amount up with a mind - melting equivalence that provides an analytical solution for counteracting spherical aberrance , which had been antecedently formulated back in 1949 as the Wasserman - Wolf job which stumped scientists for decennary .

To the ordinary person , that par is probably just more confirmation that a life history in aperient and mathematics was n’t for them . But for crystalline lens Jehovah , it can provide an exact design for designing a lens that completely extinguish any globose aberration . It does n’t matter the size of the lens , the textile it ’s made from , or what it will be used for , this equation will spit out the accurate numbers pool postulate to project it to be optically perfect .

The discovery wo n’t just appeal to picky photographers who ’ve been chivvy with minor focus issue no matter how much money they ’ve invested in their gear . It predict to help meliorate scientific imagery as well in devices like telescopes and microscopes where improved sharpness could head to other discoveries . But even the average consumer will benefit from González - Acuña ’s work . It will allow companies to contrive and construct simpler lens with few elements which cost substantially less while offer improved image quality in everything from smartphones to cheesy point - and - shoot camera .

Graphic: Rafael G. González-Acuña