AOS News - The Australian Optical Society - Macquarie University

AOS News Volume 25 Number 1 2011Editor’s IntroIfound it a bit of a struggle this time to finish the newsletter: any magazine needs tobe printed in page counts that add up to multiples of 4. I had already depleted myusual arsenal of tricks to stretch the articles across 43 pages, but found myself withone empty page left... And then the Vivid Sydney festival opened. A fantastic displayof highly sophisticated optical projection systems blending in with landmark buildingsaround Sydney’s Circular Quay. An excellent photo-opportunity presented itself, on atopic very much related to the society’s main interest: Optics! (results on page 21)It turns out the general public shares our interest, judging by the number of peopleletting out the little “Oooh!”’s everywhere, even on a rainy evening. I was probably onlyhalf as bewildered and impressed as the average visitor of the festival: we’ve seen it allbefore in some form or another, and we’d be able to explain the magic behind it at a flinch.Yet I couldn’t help to think about the myriad of research that must have preceded thedevelopment of these well-oiled systems, now robust enough to be abused by artists...Some nicely polished, massive lenses, a countless number of semiconductor lightsources, and a great deal of oversized waveguides... Have we gone the wrong way, tryingto miniaturise everything? There was even a little nonlinear optics on display: the PublicArt Pencil had a green and a white laser pointer built in!We’re all part of this now. Think of how the world will look like in 20 or 30 yearstime, and let your imagination take over for a second. Which contribution will you havemade to that ever-changing optical wallpaper all around you, or that in-eye projectionsystem that will serve as your main conduct of information? Will it be Android or iOS25.3 running on that optical CPU in your pocket?—Michaël RoelensEditor7