Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Create World's Tiniest "Ear"
sciencehabit writes "If you've ever wondered what a virus sounds like, or what noise a bacterium makes when it moves between hosts, you may soon get your chance to find out. Scientists have created the world's tiniest ear. The 'nano-ear,' a microscopic particle of gold trapped by a laser beam, can detect sound a million times fainter than the threshold for human hearing. Researchers suggest the work could open up a whole new field of 'acoustic microscopy,' in which organisms are studied using the sound they emit."
Now someone can hear when I play the world's tiniest violin.
If I wanted to know what parasitic bacteria sound like, I could just as easily turn on C-SPAN.
Now Homeland Security can spy on all of the creatures within our borders, not just multicellular lifeforms! Surely this will stop the terrorists.
personally, I bet bacteria sounds squishy.
Turn that damn light off, you jerks!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
How do you deal with noise for something this sensitive? If you're trying to measure the sound of a bacterium, and someone coughs, or walks by the room, or a truck drives by, how do you cancel that out?
I guess I just don't see how their SNR can be high enough with something that sensitive.
And a new internet niche is born.. BACTERIA PORN!!!
(applausing very very silently)
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
I would call it a microphone, but maybe that wouldn't prick up many ears.
Optical tables are wiccked expensive noise dapened pieces of equipment which isolate the hardware fro the rest of the world. Given that laser tweesers have been in use for 30yr that peoblemat least is soved
Is it tiniest as in smallest or tiniest as in most tin like/is low on bass?
Is it affected by tinitus?
They've made a guitar and a microphone but no speakers? Was this funded by the RIAA?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
The "nano-ear," a microscopic particle of gold trapped by a laser beam, can detect sound a million times fainter than the threshold for human hearing.
had a nack for spotting the next big thing. They say he had a gooooolden eeeeear!
Funnyhacks - Wierd, unusual, and fun hacks
Doesn't this make anyone else think of the micro-sonarscope that Mrs. Murry uses in Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wind in the Door" to listen to the cry of the mitochondria?
http://books.google.com/books?id=ERbzqI6hwc4C&lpg=PA77&pg=PA89#v=onepage&q&f=false
Come again? How's that? Say it slower.
Damn thing doesn't work, I can't hear a word.
Turn up the TV.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
When I returned the next day, the first doctor's advisor examined my 'burst' eardrum and realized that it wasn't what it first looked like. It was a hatched bug egg. Apparently a bug egg, had somehow been deposited on my eardrum. What I'd been hearing was the sound of a baby bug hatching.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
"And now the sound of a tsetse fly blowing its nose, maginified SIXTY MILLION TIMES!"
*a-choo*
Women are naturally equipped with ones that are considerably smaller.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Cue in obligatory alien movement sensor possibility... (original movie states it's based on "tiny movement of air" - unlike AN/PPS-26 STTW)
Really, it can hear sound a MILLION TIMES fainter?! Wow, that must be, like, 60 dB less. Truly AMAZING.
I really wish they had some samples of recordings from this microphone. I also kind of wonder what sort of transformation the sound undergoes in being amplified after being received from such a strange and tiny input. Would there be a lot of bass? Would it all be high-end? Whatever comes out of the speaker obviously isn't the same as the sound going in because there's such a difference in size and reception. I also can't imagine a golden particle in a laser beam being terribly accurate for certain frequencies or being able to capture all of the detail of a sound, but the article doesn't specify.
The NSA would like to know if with a single bug with this technology, how much farther into a building could you hear than their current implementations. Also with two or more instances of the nanophone in a single chassis, how well can we use doppler, selective signal cancellation and room modeling algorithms to choose which room we listen.
Seriously, as much scientific use as this has, usage by security services will be very interesting. A significant part of bug planting is frequently getting the bugs into low security areas, such as the lobbies of embassies, with the hope of being able to filter and get phone calls and keystrokes from adjacent higher security wings. Listening on this scale might extend to extrapolating fingerprints from the roll your finger over type scanners as an example.
Also, this form of listening should extend past sound into other frequency ranges fairly easily (radio, light, etcetera). Consider the sensitivity increase for a CCD device where the filtering and threshold apparatuses could be suspended instead of fixed.
You can't stop the signal...
short story : "Track 12"
excerpt:
" - You are completely wrong, of course. Remember the cell division series I played first of all ? Amplified 100.000 times animal cell division sounds like a lot of girders and steel sheets being ripped apart - how did you put it ? - a car smash in slow motion. On the other hand, plant cell division is an electronic poem, all soft chords and bubbling tones. Now there you have a perfect illustration of how microsonics can reveal the distinction between the animal and plant kingdoms.'
' - Seems a damned roundabout way of doing it,' Maxted commented, helping himself to soda. 'You might as well calculate the speed of your car from the apparent motion of the stars. Possible, but it's easier to look at the speedometer."
the bananophone!
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Finally we can hear it...
So, how is this going to detect anything other than Brownian noise?
Ha - I misread that as tinniest - was thinking - well - if it's that small it's bound to be tinny... :-D
W.
Reread OP and somehow missed his use of the dreaded N- word. I have to rescind my previous comment about this comment not being racist. Deepest apologies...