Night Vision Possibilities

"NIRVision is using nanotechnology to develop flexible, thin films to replace existing night-vision technology. The films use several nano-based components to convert infra-red light into visible light that we can see and understand. The first is a photo-detector film that converts invisible infra-red light into electrons. These electrons then stimulate an optical film, like a thin flexible display, to create a visible image. The overall technology will be less than a 1/2000th of a millimeter in thickness, more sensitive than conventional night-vision technologies and will use just a 1/40th of the energy.
The films will be very flexible and lightweight and can be incorporated into standard glasses or even vehicle windscreens to create night-vision head-up displays. They will also cost a fraction of what it costs to produce conventional night-vision technology. The technology has exciting potential in all security applications. NIRVision technology should be ready for field testing by 2012."


That's today. So in the near future, probably widely available. The problem with contacts would be, what happens when a light is switched on or a car goes by? You'd be blind, I would think, see just a field of white. That part of the technology, adapting to light changes, I'm not sure about.

Anything's possible in a futuristic novel. I remember a Batman comic book in which Batman wore out-of-sight nostril filters so he wouldn't be harmed by the bad guy's poison gas.

Many animals--hawks, cats--have excellent night vision. Your contact lenses could have been engineered based on that biology. Or something infra-red that reacts to changes in temperature.

Or simply go Cyberpunk and give him prosthetic eyes/eye implants that can adapt to lower light conditions.

Using current technology, the answer would be no. Light amplification is currently done by focusing light into a tube filled with radioactive gas, when a photon hits a charged atom, it shoots off an electron in the same direction as the photon was travelling. Each photon can release hundreds of electrons and those electrons fire against a phosphorescent screen, lighting it up green.

It's actually a pretty simple technology. Over the years it developed from that to a three tube system, where each tube was aligned with the previous one to further amplify light, and then that model was discarded for one that uses a positively charged wire mesh at the phosphorescent screen which pulls electrons towards it. I know there have been developments since that, but those were the latest models I worked on. Anyhow, none of those current models would allow for either colour or an incredibly small size, no matter what developments were made. It would require a completely different technology.