{"id":94906,"date":"2019-08-17T17:17:12","date_gmt":"2019-08-18T00:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/physicists-solve-2000-year-old-optical-problem"},"modified":"2019-08-17T17:17:12","modified_gmt":"2019-08-18T00:17:12","slug":"physicists-solve-2000-year-old-optical-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/physicists-solve-2000-year-old-optical-problem","title":{"rendered":"Physicists solve 2,000-year-old optical problem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/physicists-solve-2000-year-old-optical-problem2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A trio of physicists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and Tec de Monterrey has solved a 2,000-year-old optical problem\u2014the Wasserman-Wolf problem. In their paper published in the journal <i>Applied Optics<\/i>, Rafael Gonz\u00e1lez-Acu\u00f1a, H\u00e9ctor Chaparro-Romo, and Julio Guti\u00e9rrez-Vega outline the math involved in solving the puzzle, give some examples of possible applications, and describe the efficiency of the results when tested.<\/p>\n<p>Over 2,000 years ago, Greek scientist Diocles recognized a problem with <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/optical+lenses\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">optical lenses<\/a>\u2014when looking through devices equipped with them, the edges appeared fuzzier than the center. In his writings, he proposed that the effect occurs because the lenses were spherical\u2014light striking at an angle could not be focused because of differences in refraction. Isaac Newton was reportedly stumped in his efforts to solve the problem (which became known as <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/spherical+aberration\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">spherical aberration<\/a>), as was Gottfried Leibniz.<\/p>\n<p>In 1949, Wasserman and Wolf devised an analytical means for describing the problem, and gave it an official name\u2014the Wasserman-Wolf problem. They suggested that the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/best+approach\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">best approach<\/a> to solving the problem would be to use two aspheric adjacent surfaces to correct aberrations. Since that time, researchers and engineers have come up with a variety of ways to fix the problem in specific applications\u2014most particularly cameras and telescopes. Most such efforts have involved creating aspherical lenses to counteract refraction problems. And while they have resulted in improvement, the solutions have generally been expensive and inadequate for some applications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A trio of physicists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and Tec de Monterrey has solved a 2,000-year-old optical problem\u2014the Wasserman-Wolf problem. In their paper published in the journal Applied Optics, Rafael Gonz\u00e1lez-Acu\u00f1a, H\u00e9ctor Chaparro-Romo, and Julio Guti\u00e9rrez-Vega outline the math involved in solving the puzzle, give some examples of possible applications, and describe [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2229,219,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-physics","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}