Skip to main content

Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

3 comments

New Lens Allow Cameras to Change Focus Like the Human Eye

The human eye performs an amazing task every day without us even noticing. It can quickly shift focus from a book in our hands to a person standing across the room or a bird flying in the sky. This ability to adjust focus almost instantly is natural for us, but creating technology that can do the same has been a major engineering challenge.

Now, researchers at Queen Mary University of London, led by Professor James Busfield, have developed a promising new approach. Their work combines a soft, electrically responsive material with transparent graphene-based electrodes to create a compact lens that can change its focus electronically.

The research, published in Advanced Functional Materials, could help make future optical devices smaller, lighter and more efficient. Potential applications include autofocus cameras, wearable displays, virtual and augmented reality headsets, miniature medical imaging systems and scientific instruments.

A Lens Inspired by the Human Eye

Traditional cameras and optical instruments generally use rigid lenses. To change focus, these systems often move one or more lenses using motors, gears or other mechanical components.

Although these mechanisms work well, they can make optical devices larger, heavier and more complicated. Moving parts can also consume energy and eventually experience mechanical wear.

The new technology takes a very different approach.

Instead of physically moving a rigid lens, the researchers created a soft lens that can change its shape when an electrical signal is applied. The process is similar in principle to how the human eye changes the shape of its lens to focus on objects at different distances.

When electricity is applied, an electrically active soft material acts like an artificial muscle. It gently stretches the membrane supporting the lens. This small change in shape alters the lens's optical properties, allowing its focal distance to change.

In simple terms, electricity can tell the lens where to focus.

The Biggest Challenge: Transparent Electrodes

One of the main problems with electrically controlled soft lenses is the need for electrodes.

Electrodes are required to apply the electric field that changes the shape of the soft material. However, conventional electrodes can block or absorb light. This creates a major problem when the electrode needs to be placed directly in the optical path.

As a result, conventional electrostatically actuated lenses often have to position their electrodes around the edges. While this allows light to pass through the centre, it can increase the size and complexity of the overall system.

The researchers found a way around this problem by using reduced graphene oxide to create ultrathin transparent electrodes.

Graphene-based materials are attractive for this purpose because they can conduct electricity while allowing light to pass through. This makes it possible to place the electrodes directly onto the soft actuator beneath the lens.

That seemingly simple change could have a major impact on the design of adaptive optical systems.

How the Graphene Lens Works

The prototype combines several important components into a compact structure.

At its heart is a soft membrane that responds to electrical stimulation. A transparent electrode made from reduced graphene oxide is integrated into this structure. When a small electric field is applied, electrostatic forces cause the soft actuator to deform.

The deformation changes the shape of the lens.

Because the shape of a lens determines how it bends light, changing its shape also changes its focal distance. The lens can therefore move between different focus positions without requiring a traditional motor or mechanical focusing system.

The researchers carefully controlled the amount of graphene deposited onto the soft membrane. Too little graphene could limit electrical performance, while too much could reduce optical transparency.

Finding the right balance between electrical conductivity and optical clarity was therefore critical.

The resulting prototype demonstrated that a soft lens could successfully change its focus across different distances while maintaining a compact structure.

Why This Could Change Optical Technology

The biggest advantage of this approach is its simplicity.

Traditional autofocus systems often depend on mechanical components. Motors and gears require space and add weight. They can also make systems more complicated.

A soft electrically controlled lens could potentially perform the same basic focusing function without these moving mechanical parts.

Such lenses could therefore become thinner, lighter and quieter.

The technology could be particularly useful in situations where space and weight are limited.

Autofocus Cameras

Future compact cameras could use shape-changing lenses instead of conventional mechanical focusing mechanisms. This could help reduce the size of camera modules while providing fast electronic focusing.

Virtual and Augmented Reality

VR and AR headsets contain sophisticated optical systems, but their size and weight remain important design challenges. Smaller adaptive lenses could potentially help engineers develop more compact wearable displays.

Medical Imaging

Miniature medical imaging devices could also benefit. In applications where instruments need to fit into very small spaces, eliminating bulky mechanical focusing systems could make devices smaller and easier to design.

Scientific Instruments

Microscopes and other optical instruments could potentially use electronically tunable lenses for rapid focus adjustment without relying on traditional mechanical systems.

Soft Materials Acting Like Artificial Muscles

The research also demonstrates the growing connection between advanced materials and soft robotics.

Instead of using rigid motors and mechanical gears, electrically active polymers can behave somewhat like artificial muscles. They respond to electrical signals by changing their shape.

This creates opportunities for designing machines and devices that move smoothly and quietly.

Combining these soft materials with graphene-based electrodes provides an additional advantage. Graphene's electrical properties allow engineers to create very thin electrodes that can be integrated into flexible structures without completely blocking light.

This combination could lead to optical systems that are fundamentally different from conventional rigid designs.

A Promising Technology Still in Development

Despite the promising results, the graphene-based adaptive lens is still at the research stage.

One important challenge is improving the transparency of the graphene electrodes. Optical systems require high-quality light transmission, so even small amounts of unwanted absorption or scattering can affect performance.

Researchers will also need to improve the lens's overall efficiency, durability, focusing range and long-term reliability before the technology can become commercially useful.

Manufacturing at larger scales will be another important step.

Nevertheless, the study demonstrates something significant: a soft, electrically tunable lens can be created using relatively simple manufacturing techniques and inexpensive materials.

The Future of Focus Could Be Soft and Electronic

The human eye changes focus smoothly, silently and continuously. For decades, engineers have tried to reproduce aspects of this remarkable ability in artificial optical systems.

The new graphene-based adaptive lens represents an important step toward that goal.

By replacing bulky mechanical focusing mechanisms with a soft material that changes shape under an electric field, researchers have shown a possible path toward smaller and smarter optical devices.

The technology is not yet ready to replace conventional camera or medical lenses. However, as researchers improve transparency, performance and reliability, these electronically controlled soft lenses could become an important part of future cameras, wearable displays, medical devices and scientific instruments.

The bigger idea is perhaps even more exciting: instead of moving a lens to change focus, future optical devices may simply change their shape—just as the human eye does.

Reference: G. Sasso, A. Lamoreux, N. Pugno, J. J. C. Busfield, and F. Carpi, “ Reduced Graphene Oxide Transparent Electrodes Enabling Compact Soft Tunable Lenses.” Advanced Functional Materials 36, no. 56 (2026): e76426. https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.76426

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular

Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

For years, scientists believed that adding even one qubit (a unit of quantum information) to a black hole needed energy. This was based on the idea that a black hole’s entropy must increase with more information, which means it must gain energy. But a new study by Jonah Kudler-Flam and Geoff Penington changes that thinking. They found that quantum information can be teleported into a black hole without adding energy or increasing entropy . This works through a process called black hole decoherence , where “soft” radiation — very low-energy signals — carry information into the black hole. In their method, the qubit enters the black hole while a new pair of entangled particles (like Hawking radiation) is created. This keeps the total information balanced, so there's no violation of the laws of physics. The energy cost only shows up when information is erased from the outside — these are called zerobits . According to Landauer’s principle, erasing information always needs energy. But ...
3 comments
Read more

A New Type of Wormhole Could Slowly Become Stable Over Time, Scientists Suggest

For many years, wormholes have captured the imagination of scientists and science fiction fans. They are often shown as magical tunnels through space that can connect two faraway places in the universe. If wormholes really exist, they could one day make it possible to travel huge distances in a very short time. But there is one big problem—no one has ever found a real wormhole. They remain only theoretical objects predicted by the mathematics of Einstein's theory of general relativity. Even though they have never been observed, physicists continue studying them because they help us understand the limits of gravity and spacetime. Now, researchers Ditta and Channuie have proposed a new model of a time-dependent traversable wormhole . Unlike many earlier models, their wormhole is not completely still. Instead, it changes with time because energy flows through it. As this flow slowly fades away, the wormhole naturally becomes stable. Their study offers a new and simple way to understan...
Post a Comment
Read more

Black Holes That Never Dies

Black holes are powerful objects in space with gravity so strong that nothing can escape them. In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking showed that black holes can slowly lose energy by giving off tiny particles. This process is called Hawking radiation . Over time, the black hole gets smaller and hotter, and in the end, it disappears completely. But new research by Menezes and his team shows something different. Using a theory called Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) , they studied black holes with quantum corrections. In their model, the black hole does not vanish completely. Instead, it stops shrinking when it reaches a very small size. This leftover is called a black hole remnant . They also studied something called grey-body factors , which affect how much energy escapes from a black hole. Their findings show that the black hole cools down and stops losing mass once it reaches a minimum mass . This new model removes the idea of a “singularity” at the center of the black hole and gives us a better ...
Post a Comment
Read more