PhysOrg knows, thanks to this math professor’s blind-spot-eliminating side-view mirror:

A side mirror that eliminates the dangerous “blind spot” for drivers has now received a U.S. patent. The subtly curved mirror, invented by Drexel University mathematics professor Dr. R. Andrew Hicks, dramatically increases the field of view with minimal distortion.

…

Hicks’s driver’s side mirror has a field of view of [...]

New Scientist sees through me like glass. In fact, my skin could be better than glass:

In 2007, Allard Mosk and colleagues at Twente University in Enschede, the Netherlands, demonstrated that materials not normally transparent to optical wavelengths can be used to sharply focus what little light gets through. By correlating input and output light, the researchers [...]

BBC brings back our belief in Santa Claus with an update from the Arctic Circle… that reindeer can see ultraviolet light:

“If you’re a bumblebee, you wouldn’t think much of what this animal is doing because it’s seeing in what’s called ‘near UV’ (about 320 to 400nm), but that’s still very high energy stuff.”

The researchers believe UV vision could enable [...]

It shouldn’t be surprising that The Optical Society likes getting a little flashy… but their beetle test subjects take things a little too far:

Costa Rica was once regarded as the poorest of all the colonies of the Spanish Empire, sadly deficient in the silver and gold so coveted by conquistadors. As it turns out, all of the glittering [...]

LiveScience takes a hard look at the stony gaze of the chiton:

While scientists had discovered the hundreds of eye-like structures on the surface of this armored mollusk, called a chiton, decades ago, they didn’t know what they were made of or whether they could actually see objects or just sensed light.

“Turns out they can see objects, [...]

From Chris Pirillo’s Lockergnome comes news of good cheer to those who can’t tear their gaze away from Left4Dead for more than a few seconds at a time. Researchers have concluded that video games improve vision:

The ability to discern slight differences in shades of gray has long been thought to be an attribute of the human visual system [...]

The great thing about laser weapons, New Scientist says, isn’t just that you can fry your enemy from miles away. You can also shrug your shoulders and say, “No, really, I didn’t zap that guy!”:

As the term suggests, “plausible deniability” is used to describe situations where those responsible for an event could plausibly claim to have had no involvement [...]

The Spitzer Space Telescope being sent on its way aboard a huge, hot Delta rocket, as a honeybee might have seen it.

When Spitzer launched Monday, 25 August 2003 at 1:35:39 a.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, members of the Spitzer team were poised two miles away with an infrared camera. At that distance, the Delta [...]