Biohackers Inject Night Vision Into A Man's Eyeballs So He Can See In The Dark
In a complete WTF scenario, a group of biohackers and researchers who go by the name Science for the Masses has given one of their team, the valiant Gabriel Licina, night vision—and there's not a pair of goggles in sight (pun fully intended).
The superhero-style vision was done by injecting Licina with something called Chlorin e6 (or Ce6), which can be found in deep-sea, Midnight Zone dwelling fish. They injected it using what Science.Mic unsettlingly describe as "what's basically a really fine turkey baster" which they used to drip microliters of Ce6 into Licina's eyes.
After injecting it into the conjunctival sac so it could be transported to the retina, Licina experienced a "quick, greenish-black blur across my vision, and then it dissolved into my eyes." To protect his eyes he had to wear protective lens (which is why his eyes appear black) and eventually sunglasses too as his sensitivity to light increased.
The results definitely give the whole affair a feeling of something you might see in the new X-Men: Apocalypse film, it's totally creepy--But does it actually work?
After around an hour the chemical had taken full effect and they went out into the dark to do some controlled tests. Here's what they wrote in their published report:
The Ce6 solution has been shown to work in as little as one hour, with the effects lasting for “many hours” afterwards. After 2 hours of adjustment, the subject and 4 controls were taken to a darkened area and subjected to testing. Three forms of subjective testing were performed. These consisted of symbol recognition by distance, symbol recognition on varying background colors at a static distance, and the ability to identify moving subjects in a varied background at varied distances. Symbol recognition consisted of placing a collection of objects with markings on them (numbers, letters, shapes). Subjects were then asked to identify the markings, each viewing the objects from the same location at a distance of 10 meters. The markings were not made prior to the moment of testing.
For subject recognition, individuals went moved in a small grove of trees. They were allowed to chose their own location independently. Distances ranged from 25 to 50 meters from observation point and trees and brush were used for “blending”. Locations were chosen without being observed by the test subjects. The Ce6 subject and controls were handed a laser pointer and asked to identify the location of the people in the grove. After testing the Ce6 subject replaced the sunglasses which were not removed until sleep. Eyesight in the morning seemed to have returned to normal and as of 20 days, there have been no noticeable effects.
The Ce6 subject consistently recognized symbols that did not seem to be visible to the controls. The Ce6 subject identified the distant figures 100% of the time, with the controls showing a 33% identification rate.
After showing that it is actually possible, the team plan to do lab tests and collate some figures and data to quantify their remarkable achievement. Next up, shooting lasers out of your eyes. Or maybe X-Ray vision.
For those of you who are too lazy to read, we have found a video detailing the whole event.
h/t Science.Mic