Solar panels could be improved by mimicking the design of the eyes of a fly that lived 45m years ago. A pattern of ridges found on the surface of the fly's eyes could reduce reflection and so allow panels to capture light arriving at very oblique angles. The idea comes from Andrew Parker, a zoologist at the Australian Museum in Sydney. While visiting the Museum of the Earth in Warsaw, Poland, he noticed some electron micrographs of a fly from the family Dolichopodidae, preserved in amber during the Eocene epoch. On the surface of the ommatidia that make up the fly's compound eye, Parker noticed gratings consisting of a series of parallel ridges 145 nanometres high and 240 nanometres apart. He suspected that the fly's eye structure could capture light arriving up to 72 degrees from the perpendicular.
