Have you ever ACTUALLY seen red?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science saying…
Infrared that is! Infrared light is radiation that’s invisible to the naked eye, but can be felt as warmth. You can see it with heat vision goggles, and some cameras. But what if you wanted to see it covertly, without looking like a weirdo?
Enter Yuqian Ma and team at the University of Science and Technology of China. They created infrared CONTACT LENSES. Wow!
These lenses let humans see patterns and colors even with their eyes closed. Near-infrared light sneaks in through their eyelids!
Seeing in the dark? No problem. They even work in fog or dust.
Dang! The future looks bright, especially in infrared!
Reference: Ma, Y., Chen, Y., Wang, S., Chen, Z.-H., Zhang, Y., Huang, L., … & Xue, T. (2025). Near-infrared spatiotemporal color vision in humans enabled by upconversion contact lenses. Cell, 188(13), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2025.04.019