Octopus eye lens created, according to an article in news@nature 7 December 2004. The article begins: “A lens resembling an octopus eye has been created by US researchers.” Eric Baer and a team of scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC have built an artificial lens that has the focussing power of an octopus eye. Lenses work by bending light when it passes across the interface between a less dense substance and a higher density substance, e.g. between air and water, or air and glass. As water is much denser than air an animal that lives in water needs an eye with stronger focussing power than one that lives in air. An octopus eye has about five times the focussing power of a human eye. To make such a powerful lens Baer’s team copied the structure seen in many animal lenses – they built it from many layers. By having many layers of different densities a lens can be very powerful without added bulk. A multilayered lens also provides a smoothly changing gradient that gives better focus. The artificial lens has about 6,000 microscopic layers made from two different polymers. Human eye lenses have about 22,000 layers and lenses in some other living creatures have hundreds of thousands of layers.
Editorial Comment: At the risk of boring you after so many Designed examples in this Fact File, let us repeat that if it took a team of intelligent scientists to make, (design, construct, create) a 6,000 layer lens made with polymers of two different densities, such scientists should have no problem believing a superior lens to their manufactured one, with at least 22,000 and up to hundreds of thousands of layers which are made (designed, constructed, created) from substances with different densities, was created by a greater intelligence than their own. As the old hymn writer stated, “To God be the Glory, great things He has done”. (Ref. Convergence, Creator, Invertebrate, Design)