Recent research performed at UMBC reveals that the eyes of mantis shrimp might help shed light on making better DVDs and CDs. The compound eye of the peacock mantis, the new study’s authors found, harbors a natural quarter-wave retarder, a filter that converts circularly polarized light to linearly polarized light. “Biologically, this is unique,” said Thomas Cronin, a professor of biological sciences. “There is nothing else known anywhere in biology” that enables detection of circularly polarized light, he adds.
The article, “Polarized Peepers,” ran Tuesday, October 27, in Scientific American.
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