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Back in April, U.S. Army Lieutenant General James Richardson told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the new ENVG-B \\u2013 the army\\u2019s enhanced night vision goggle-binocular \\u2013 was \\u201cbetter than anything (he\\u2019s) experienced\\u201d in his whole career.

But according to Task & Purpose, the night vision game is hot right now and Microsoft is working on a project that could bump out this new tech as soon as 2022. It\\u2019s being referred to as being almost like \\u201ca real-life Call of Duty\\u201d and incorporates a version of the developer\\u2019s HoloLens augmented realty technology, along with night and thermal vision capabilities.

But for some scientists, the night vision technology race that\\u2019s already underway isn\\u2019t good enough, as they want to get rid of the glasses part entirely. And just how do you do that? Well, for most of us, it\\u2019s the stuff of nightmares.\\xa0

Scientists like Dr. Gang Han feel there is another way for soldiers in combat missions to utilize night vision, and without any heavy equipment because they\\u2019d just be using their own eyes \\u2013 with some modifications, of course.\\xa0

Han\\u2019s team at the University of Massachusetts Medical School propose injecting the user\\u2019s eyeball with nanoparticles that can enhance their ability to see more than just standard \\u201cvisible light.\\u201d Their experiments started with mice, whose eyes were injected with upconversion nanoparticles \\u2013 or UCNPs. According to a press release published by the American Chemical Society, who plans to host a presentation on the technology this Fall, these nanoparticles contain rare-earth elements which can \\u201cconvert low-energy photons from NIR light into higher-energy green light that mammalian eyes can see.\\u201d

The UCNPs lasted about ten weeks in the mice\\u2019s eyes and didn\\u2019t cause any noticeable side effects. And while there are many obvious upsides to having superpowers, will troops be on board with the whole needle in the eyeball thing? The glasses, we should note, only weigh about two pounds.

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