Arthur C. Clarke wrote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”. Magic is the first word that came to mind when I read about the MicroSight which has been developed at the Idaho National Laboratory. The new gun sight allows a shooter to focus on the front sight and on the target at the same time.

One day, Crandall was leafing through an optics textbook, and he stumbled across a section on “zone plates.” Zone plates are optical devices that resemble lenses. But whereas lenses focus light using refraction — essentially, changing the direction of light waves by changing their speed — zone plates use diffraction. Diffraction describes how waves bend, break up, spread out and interfere with each other as they encounter obstacles. The diffraction of sound waves, for example, explains how you can hear someone’s voice from around a corner.

The technology has been licensed to Apollo Optical Systems, who are working on bringing it to the market.

AccurateShooter has also blogged about the sights.

[ Many thanks to David for emailing me the link. ]