Shrimp-Ray Discs Could Revolutionise DVD Technology
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Mantis shrimp eyes provide inspiration for next generation digital storage solutions.
Forget Blu-ray discs, the next generation of DVD will be Shrimp-ray if the latest revelations from a scientific paper published in Nature Photonics are to be believed.
Investigations into the mantis shrimp, whose natural habitat is in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, have found that their eyes work in a similar way to CDs and DVDs, converting light to store information in different formats.
The amazing shrimps have the most intricate vision known to modern science as the creatures can see in 12 different colours and can distinguish different forms of light to give them superior depth perception to other animals. It puts the human range of just 3 colours to shame, and the special light sensitive receptors in the eyes make the shrimps like an organic DVD player.
Dr Nicholas Roberts, who led the shrimp ocular study told The Daily Telegraph: “It really is exceptional – out-performing anything we humans have so far been able to create. What’s particularly exciting is how beautifully simple it is. This natural mechanism, comprised of cell membranes rolled into tubes, completely out-performs synthetic designs.”
The natural design within the shrimp eye could now be copied by innovative technology studios to help forge the next generation of information discs. The advantage of shrimp vision over the capabilities of current DVDs is that mantis shrimps can convert light across the entire spectrum into information which can be stored and retrieved.
DVD lasers can only work within a rather limited band of light, but the proposition is that using shrimp eyes could open up new possibilities to push the technological capacity further than ever before. “It could help us make better optimal devices in the future using liquid crystals that have been chemically engineered to mimic the properties of the cells in the mantis shrimp’s eye,” said Dr Roberts.
I hope they hurry up with getting the format into the mass production stage.