Imagine being able to see in the dark without having to wear any clunky nightvision goggles? Well, a group of biohackers called Science for the Masses have just achieved such a scientific breakthrough using droplets of Chlorin e6 (or Ce6), a chlorophyll-like substance which can be extracted from deep-sea fish.
In a recent experiment, the California-based collective dropped Ce6 into the eyes of fellow researcher Gabriel Licina:
[Medical officer Jeffrey] Tibbetts slowly dripped 50 microliters of Ce6, an extremely low dose, into Licina’s speculum-stretched eyes, aiming for the conjunctival sac, which carried the chemical to the retina.
Within sixty minutes, Licina began to feel the effects of the Ce6. He could see in the dark:
It started with shapes, hung about 10 meters away. “I’m talking like the size of my hand,” Licina says. Before long, they were able to do longer distances, recognizing symbols and identifying moving subjects against different backgrounds.
“The other test, we had people go stand in the woods,” he says. “At 50 meters, we could figure out where they were, even if they were standing up against a tree.” Each time, Licina had a 100% success rate. The control group, without being dosed with Ce6, only got them right a third of the time.
Science for the Masses documented the entire study in a lengthy report, which can be found here.