Here.

The new technology, a compelling variant on Bayer's approach, was invented by John Hamilton and John Compton, a couple of scientists in Rochester, N.Y. It enhances the Bayer pattern by adding a filter that can enable "panchromatic" pixels, or those that are sensitive to all visible colors.

These pixels do not exclude any light, so they allow a black-and-white image to be detected with high sensitivity. The data from the panchromatic pixels is then added to the data from the red, green and blue pixels, so a picture can be constructed from more information than with the old technology.

The result is two to four times more detail in a given digital photo. And you're getting this increased detail for the same number of megapixels (megapixels are the units used to count the number of pixels a camera uses).