Nature's smallest rainbows, created by peacock spiders, may inspire new optical technology

(University of Akron) The mechanism behind these tiny rainbows may inspire new color technology, but wouldn't have been discovered without research combining basic natural history with physics and engineering. These super iridescent spider scales can be used to overcome current limitations in spectral manipulation, and to reduce the size of optical spectrometers for applications where fine-scale spectral resolution is required in a very small package, notably instruments on space missions, or we...