Peacock Feather

 

This is a peacock feather from one of the eye-spot tail feathers. I was wondering why the feathers are iridescent and came across a National Geographic article that referred to this article in Forma (A Journal Published for the The Society for Science on Form):
Forma, 17, 169–181, 2002
Shinya YOSHIOKA and Shuichi KINOSHITA
Effect of Macroscopic Structure in Iridescent Color
of the Peacock Feathers They have some super closeups (as in 1 micrometer) of the structure responsible for the colors.

This led me to another article on a 50 million year old beetle fossile that had maintained it's iridescent blue sheen since the color was dependent upon the structure of tha material rather than some sort of pigment.

Now of course I want to manufacture a set of paints that won't fade in the sun and clothes that I bleach the heck out of without ruining.