Fresnel lenses may help to find life in other solar systems

economist.com

24 points·DavidSJ··9 comments

The title is wrong. These are not Fresnel lenses, they are zone plates, which were also invented by Fresnel.

As a side note, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_plate makes for very interesting reading for those (such as myself) who are unfamiliar with the physics of the wave nature of light.

Thanks for that link -- I was pretty sure that Fresnel lenses were refractive, and I ended up reading most of the article trying to reconcile the plastic lenses that I've seen with the copper diffraction grating that it seemed to be describing.

Thanks, sorry about the incorrect title.

This right here is astoundingly good science journalism. Accurate (to the best of my knowledge) and clear, that's all I ask, and this brief article in The Economist gets it right.

Am I missing something, or is the writer's name not mentioned?

Articles in The Economist don't get bylines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_economist#Tone_and_voice

That's a shame, because this writer is far better than most science journalists.

If you're out there, anonymous writer, nice work!

It's always this good.

No, not accurate. The article is about zone plates, not fresnel lenses.

The article doesn't actually mention "fresnel lens" anywhere. It does mention "zone plate" five times though.

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