RedORbit - April Flowers - July 18, 2013
April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Butterflies have beautiful wings full of colorful patterns that do remarkable things with light. A new study from a Hong Kong Baptist University team of physicists has uncovered how subtle differences in tiny crystals of butterfly wings create stunningly varied patterns of color, even among closely related species. If the team can figure out how to replicate the wings’ light-manipulating properties, the discovery could lead to new coatings for manufactured materials that could change color by design.
“It was very exciting to see how nature can create a nanostructure that’s not easy to replicate by humans,” says Kok Wai Cheah, a physicist at Hong Kong Baptist University. Cheah and his team are the first to investigate the color-creating properties in multiple butterfly species within a single genus.
The research team studied three tropical butterfly species that display iridescence – a property of materials that change color depending on the viewing angle. All three, however, displayed different colors. When seen from above, Papilio ulysses, the Ulysses butterfly or blue mountain swallowtail, appears bluish green, while its cousinPapilio peranthus, by contrast, looks yellowish green, and a third relative, Papilio blumei, the green swallowtail, is more of a deep green. All three species shift toward a deep blue color when viewed from a sharp angle.
