World’s thinnest hologram may forever change how we look at screens

Okay, guys, we are in ‘Cloud Atlas’. Or James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ realm. A team of scientists at RMIT University in Melbourne has just unveiled a hologram so thin that it brings us closer to the worlds in those movies than we’ve ever imagined.

The hologram was developed by a team of Chinese and Australian researchers and is dubbed to be ”the world’s thinnest” one so far, measuring at just 25 nanometers. It is 1000 times thinner than a human hair and can be seen with a naked eye, no 3D glasses needed – this might be it, guys!

This tech has the potential to render screen size on devices ‘irrelevant’ and gets us a step closer to having hologram features in common electronic devices. Imagine how much more you would be able to see and do, if you had a 3D pop-up form to play with, instead a conventional 2D image on a screen. The possibilities are mind-boggling.

The ambition the team has is to manage to shrink the pixels in the hologram and develop a rigid thin film that could be laid onto an LCD screen to enable 3D holographic display. Should this happen, the hologram may make its way to the screens of many consumer devices, bringing us into the world of Avatar, finally. 

But, we shouldn’t get too get carried away into Pandora, as we better not hold our breaths for this tech to hit mainstream. Or even a stream. While the invented hologram truly is a masterpiece of real life sci-fi, it will indeed take quite a bit of time before it's bug free and integrated with mass-produce electronics. Besides, we live in times when we get new patents for unimaginable creations on a weekly basis. So, who knows if someone else won’t have invented an even better hologram tech, before Professor Min Gu and team have managed to commercialise their product. Nonetheless, good job, scientists, this hologram truly makes us dream. 

Source: RMIT University via CNET