Conventional wisdom would say that blocking a hole would prevent light from going through it, but Princeton University engineers have discovered the opposite to be true. A research team has found that placing a metal cap over a small hole in a metal film does not stop the light at all, but rather enhances its transmission.
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Princeton engineers have developed new technique for revealing images of hidden objects may one day allow pilots to peer through fog and doctors to see more precisely into the human body without surgery.
When photographers zoom in on an object to see it better, they lose the wide-angle perspective -- they are forced to trade off "big picture" context for detail. But now an imaging method developed by Princeton researchers could lead to lenses that show all parts of the scene at once in the same high detail. The new method could help build more powerful microscopes and other optical devices.
