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JS85
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Strange Optics Question: photon capture and reproduction
Imagine that you are sitting in your room staring out your window at a tree branch and a single leaf about to blow off. Suddenly someone comes up to you and says "You know that window, that's no ordinary window, it is actually a black sheet, with one side covered in photon capture devices and the other side covered in teeny tiny lasers. It only looks like a window because the properties and direction of each individual photon are measured on one side and the photon stream is reproduced on the other by tiny little lasers (like these http://gizmodo.com/5500375/the-worlds-smallest-laser).
Photoreceptors capture diffuse light, without a lens, you will just get a gray mess. However, lenses capture the properties of a light field at one specific focal point or range. But if you could capture the individual photons, you could duplicate a light field as it exists in the real world. So... is this theoretically possible? Could you have such a magic window?
Imagine that you are sitting in your room staring out your window at a tree branch and a single leaf about to blow off. Suddenly someone comes up to you and says "You know that window, that's no ordinary window, it is actually a black sheet, with one side covered in photon capture devices and the other side covered in teeny tiny lasers. It only looks like a window because the properties and direction of each individual photon are measured on one side and the photon stream is reproduced on the other by tiny little lasers (like these http://gizmodo.com/5500375/the-worlds-smallest-laser).
Photoreceptors capture diffuse light, without a lens, you will just get a gray mess. However, lenses capture the properties of a light field at one specific focal point or range. But if you could capture the individual photons, you could duplicate a light field as it exists in the real world. So... is this theoretically possible? Could you have such a magic window?
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