ANTI-​​LASER CONTACT LENSES

I think we all winced when we read, back in September, about the Delta pilot who was hit in the eye by a laser while fly­ing a 737. Or about the 20 year-​​old Los Alamos intern who was zapped dur­ing a July exper­i­ment.
Air Force researchers must not have liked what they read, either. That’s pre­sum­ably why they’re look­ing to develop a con­tact lens that can pro­tect against laser blasts (scroll down to find it).
Lasers are becom­ing more and more com­mon on the bat­tle­field. Range find­ers, smart bomb guid­ance pack­ages, and air­plane pro­tec­tion sys­tems all use the rays. And while the Air Force has been work­ing hard to put together eye­wear that’ll keep the lasers at bay, it’s been hard to inte­grate the things with “pro­tec­tive equip­ment (hel­mets, gog­gles, and chem/​bio gear), life sup­port equip­ment (visors and oxy­gen masks), and avion­ics (head/​helmet mounted dis­plays and night vision gog­gles).” Corrective glasses only make the prob­lem worse.
Anti-​​laser con­tact lenses might solve many of the prob­lems, though. And they’d cover the eye bet­ter than glasses or goggles.

The con­tact lens sits on the eye, the entire cornea and pupil are cov­ered, so there is no chance of a reflec­tion, or high angle inci­dent beam, sneak­ing behind the LEP [Laser Eye Protection]. Therefore, cou­pled with the appro­pri­ate laser pro­tec­tion tech­nol­ogy, con­tact lenses pro­vide a per­fectly sized defense against eye injury, elim­i­nat­ing direct and off-​​axis reti­nal haz­ards from todays most dan­ger­ous mil­i­tary lasers that oper­ate in the far red and near infrared spec­trum (670 nm 1200 nm).

November 29th, 2004 | Lasers and Ray Guns | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.