Imagine a device no bigger than a fingernail that can see the world, and the stars, in colours so precise that it leaves traditional cameras and spectroscopes far behind. That’s exactly what a team of Chinese researchers has created at Tsinghua University.
Their tiny optical chip, named Yuheng (also called Rafael), can analyze light in real-time with a precision once possible only in large, complex laboratory instruments.
“This high-performing yet easily integrated snapshot spectroscopic method could drive advances in fields ranging from material science to astrophysics,” the study authors note.
To give you an idea of the chip’s potential, it could drastically speed up mapping the Milky Way – a task that would normally take millennia (1,000 years) – and complete it in less than a decade.
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