

Colour printing reaches its ultimate resolution - ananyob
http://www.nature.com/news/colour-printing-reaches-its-ultimate-resolution-1.11159

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DenisM
Salient point: _the diffraction limit, sets in when the distance between two
objects is equal to half the wavelength of the light used for imaging. The
wavelength in the middle of the colour spectrum is about 500 nanometres. That
means the pixels in a printed image can’t be spaced any closer together than
about 250 nanometres without looking smudged. Yang’s images pack the pixels at
just this distance._

Hence, "ultimate resolution".

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lini
It's funny they still use the Lenna image for testing. It's from a Playboy
centerfold in 1972[1].

[1]<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lenna>

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lucisferre
Yeah I was thinking the same thing. Used that image myself for my undergrad
thesis project on image compression. Didn't actually know who it was till a
while later, it was just an image given to me to use.

This was my favorite part of the story <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/>

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malkia
Beat that Retina :).... Just kidding... Retina is just fine for our poor human
eyes.

But this is incredible nonetheless. Just Enhance!

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praxulus
The resolution might not be beneficial for electronic displays, but the this
technology can achieve a wider range of colors than any RGB display could
possibly achieve. It's probably far less precise with current technology, but
directly controlling the wavelength of the reflected light gives you access to
more colors than just mixing 3 fixed wavelengths.

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Cushman
Could we theoretically control the resonance of these nano-posts
electronically, and use this technology as the basis for a next-generation
reflective display?

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lucisferre
Your poor video card... :-(

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Cushman
It's only, what, 450 times the density of a Retina MacBook... So you only
need, what, a 200,000 times faster card? No sweat.

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geuis
It's 100,000 dpi, not 10k.

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ananyob
Thanks. Dumb error on my part.

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Tsagadai
The way the article (I know it's Nature, but still) talks about "highest
possible" makes it sound dubious. Surely there is a printing scale below this
at a molecular or atomic level (or even at the sub-atomic level). Saying this
is the "highest possible" is terrible scientific reporting because we know of
smaller scales we just don't necessarily know how to 'print' them yet.

It's an impressive achievement but I don't think it is the "ultimate".

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roel_v
From the article:

"Even under the best microscope, optical images have an ultimate resolution
limit, and this method hits it. When two objects are too close together, light
reflecting off them will diffract, and the two objects blur together. This
effect, called the diffraction limit, sets in when the distance between two
objects is equal to half the wavelength of the light used for imaging. The
wavelength in the middle of the colour spectrum is about 500 nanometres. That
means the pixels in a printed image can’t be spaced any closer together than
about 250 nanometres without looking smudged. Yang’s images pack the pixels at
just this distance."

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StavrosK
It's amazing to me that we can manipulate individual particles. Even if I knew
how it was done, it'd still be magical.

