Physics on the BattleField: The Night Vision Goggles in Narcos


The series has gained an international fame from the first season.

Narcos is a very popular American TV series produced and distributed for Netflix. The show tells the story of Pablo Escobar and, in the third season, focuses on the empire of the Cali cartel. The show has achieved a great international resonance and, in 2016, has been awarded as "Best Dramatic TV Show".

In one of the episodes of the last season, Agent Peña and the informant Bern have the task of saving an American girl, captured by a group of guerrillas, who has the key to unmask the shady deals of the most dangerous Colombian cartel. The mission must be carried out in the jungle and Peña's soldiers are forced to use night-vision goggles to detect enemies hidden in the bushes.

Let's analyze how these sensors can detect the presence of people and animals, even if hidden by walls!

Any hot object emits characteristic thermal radiation. For ease, we consider the radiation emitted by a black body (not all warm bodies are black bodies). First of all, a black body is an ideal object that absorbs all the light frequencies and produces a precise emission spectrum, determined by its temperature (Planck radiation function, graph below).


The emission spectrum of a black body depends on its temperature. The warmer the body the higher the frequency of the radiation it emits.

The wavelength of the dominant emitted radiation can be calculated very easily. If we assume that the human body is a black body, the dominant wavelength emitted is 9.38 micrometers long. The night vision goggles are built to detect these infrared frequencies, not visible to the naked eye, and to build images in false colors to increase the visibility of the enemy (based on the range of temperatures detected).

Furthermore, the optical depth of a concrete wall is very small in the infrared spectrum as if the wall itself was made of glass, which is optically thin to visible light. This explains how a thermal detector is able to "see" beyond the walls and in the darkness.

This is how agent Peña finds his enemies hidden in the darkness and brings them to justice!


The optical depth of the material depends on the frequency of light. In fact, we can see the hands under the bag but not through the glasses of the boy! As we know, the opposite would happen in the visible spectrum.

In conclusion, Peña has Physics on his side and uses it to neutralize the hidden enemies. The Cali bosses will not last forever.

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