|
|
Article: 20/20 lenses coat body of sea creature.(brittlestar has microlens arrays on its arms)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- August 25, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Look closely enough at the arms of the brittlestar, a starfish relative, and you'd see that those arms are looking right back at you. Each one is coated with perfect lenses that focus light onto a nerve bundle, researchers report in the Aug. 23 NATURE. Made of skeletal material, these lens structures rival recent engineering advances in microlens arrays.
"To find them [microlens arrays] in nature is absolutely astonishing," says physicist Roy Sambles of the University of Exeter in England.
Joanna Aizenberg of Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., and her colleagues discovered the lenses while studying the architecture of the transparent ...