Will Night Vision Goggles Be Replaced by Night Vision Contact Lenses?

If you're like me, and you are served what the internet thinks are news bites relevant to your interests on a daily basis, you've definitely run across a lot of articles lately picking up on some research that has been conducted on the creation of a specialized contact lens which grants its wearer night vision capabilities. Of course, as with most things, the headlines sound much more fantastical than the reality. 

No doubt, this is real research, and quite interesting. The idea that this research could then be applied and developed to create a night vision solution rivaling what we have today in image intensified monocular or goggle systems worn externally, however, is fantasy. This is an idea mainly represented in news media, but most articles cite at a minimum, an interest by the Pentagon and U.S. Army in this type of technology. 

The basis for the idea are light-converting nanoparticles or graphene, which have proven to be able to be incorporated into polymers similar to a contact lens, granting a human wearer the ability to perceive light wavelengths which is emitted outside of the regular visible spectrum. 

Of course, we know that around us in the 'visible dark' exist other wavelengths of light which, if perceptible, could allow some additional visual capability. So in a sense, this development does have some night vision application. There is one critical missing link, however, which would prevent such a contact lens from creating a night vision capability similar to what we already have in devices today.

That missing link is electrically-based amplification of light particles. This phenomenon happens inside of Generation 2 and 3 night vision technologies and is critical to improving the visible capabilities of the user. With current generation image intensification, viewers aren't just seeing light beyond the visible spectrum, they're seeing an intensely amplified amount of light overall. The sensationalized reports of 'night vision contact lenses' all seem to leave out that simple converting light wavelengths humans can't normally see into ones we can see is really only the beginning of the equation. Even Gen 1 night vision image intensifiers amplify available light levels roughly 1,000 times the available environmental level using electron acceleration.

So, while giving the human observer the ability to perceive a wider spectrum wavelength has many cool possible applications, creating competitive night vision solutions with current technology doesn't seem to be one of them - unless the tech is developed much, much further.