“Materials such as paper, paint, and biological tissue are opaque because the light that passes through them is scattered in complicated and seemingly random ways. A new experiment conducted by researchers at the City of Paris Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution (ESPCI) has shown that it’s possible to focus light through opaque materials and detect objects hidden behind them, provided you know enough about the material.
The experiment is reported in the current issue of Physical Review Letters, and is the subject of Viewpoint in APS Physics by Elbert van Putten and Allard Mosk of the University of Twente.”
Read more at Science Daily
sounds more like the light’s going around, not thru.
Hm, an image or such would be even more enlightening, although .. the way this matrix works on this light ot make it go through opague materials .. might look not too enlightening .. although .. Anyhow, bending the light .. making it go the way you want it to go .. at least, that’s the picture I get from it.
Now, makes me think of people who can see through clothes .. hm .. how come ..
The light does go through the translucent material, but is scattered about, so when it comes out the photons are no longer ordered as they were when they went in (an exact spatial ordering of the photons is what we see as a clear picture). Think of frosted bathroom glass – light clearly passes through, but it doesn’t come straight through – it gets scattered and bounced about, so the resulting image is just a big blur. The same is true of a translucent material, such as the foam sponge shown in the picture.
Theoretically, it ought to be possible to unscramble these light patterns, to recover the original image. It may even be practical with something like bathroom glass, where the peturbations are at a fairly large scale. As for the sponge, I’m doubtful they could measure it accurately.