[thinkingisfun]

Oh bullshit.

The flat lens eliminates optical aberrations such as the “fish-eye” effect that results from conventional wide-angle lenses.

Surely you wouldn't claim that is referring to wide-angle thermal lenses?

“In the future we can potentially replace all the bulk components in the majority of optical systems with just flat surfaces,” says lead author Francesco Aieta, a visiting graduate student from the Università Politecnica delle Marche in Italy. “It certainly captures the imagination.”

Oh yes it does. If you help the imagination along with misleading phrasing, that is. If you don't believe me, just read the rest of the comments here, most of them expecting to see some application in photography.

If you get good glass it'll beat the resolution/noisiness of your sensor anyway. Distortion and aberration can be fixed in software quite well; it sure beats waiting that won't come for a long, long time, if even ever.

Don't get me wrong, this is cool for what it actually applies to, but flirting with "capturing the imagination" in such ways gets no respect from me.