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Nano-Scale Terahertz Antenna May Make Tricorders Real
MrSeb writes "Researchers from Imperial College London and A*STAR in Singapore have shown off a terahertz antenna that's just 100 nanometers across — about 30,000 times smaller than existing terahertz antennae — and two orders of magnitude stronger than other T-ray beam-forming techniques. T-rays are a lot like EHF (extremely high frequency), which is used by millimeter wave scanners in airports, medical imaging, and emerging wireless networking standards like WiGig — but stronger, faster, and more detailed. Where EHF radiation can see through your clothes, T-rays can penetrate a few millimeters of skin. Furthermore, because atoms and molecules have a unique terahertz-range signature, T-ray scanners can detect toxic substances, bombs, drugs — or even cancerous tumors under your skin. Most importantly, though, due to the nano scale of these antennae, it's possible to create huge antennae arrays on a single silicon chip, meaning hand-held T-ray scanners are now a possibility. In the not so distant future, every household might have a Star Trek-like tricorder capable of detecting cancer or other diseases."
or giving it to us.
into "In the not so distant future, every household might have a Star Trek-like tricorder capable of giving you cancer or other diseases."
Come on if you are going to be cooking my gonads the least you can do is make me breakfast too...
This Earth place is pretty primitive.
Awesome! It'll be my next purchase right after I get my flying car!
If you meant *medical* tricorder, why didn't you say *medical* tricorder? There's a difference, ya'know.
Please don't say something is 30,000 times smaller. "100 nanometers" is good enough. And what does "two orders of magnitude stronger" mean?
I predict this: should such technology be realized, it will be illegal for ordinary citizens to use it (except as part of carefully restricted appliances), but the police will use it to scan all of us as we walk around.
Palm trees and 8
I love the idea of a tricorder, but please, invent something that is PASSIVE.
Yeah, go ahead and assume we all know what a fictional device is...
So pretty soon, your cell phone will not only be able to give you cancer, it will also be able to tell you that you have cancer, too! All they need is an app to cure it next! I see a tremendous marketing opportunity here!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation
Correct me if 'm horribly wrong, but in Star trek, even though tricorders are multipurpose sensors, there are different types of them. Like engineering tricorders or just regular tricorders. Every story I see that says tricorders seems to only refer to medical tricorders. But really, if I was given a tricorder, I'd use it for determining the spectrum usage, what kind of radiation is around me, interfacing with computers, etc...
Before everyone starts blasting each other with tricorders (or hang arouind at the scanners too often ati the airports), considering safety might be in order. Non-thermal effects on gene expression have been seen.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21991556
Comparisons with Star Trek are not a good idea. What looks really cool as a prop on TV, becomes decidedly less cool in reality.
The comm badges become the oh so dorky bluetooth headset. Three to beam up.
The rugged touch-screen devices, become gimmicky ipads. Raise shields? I bought an app for that somewhere...
Geordis visor becomes a bulky VR headset with loads of cables coming out of it.
This "feature" will be rolled out to all Law Enforcement across America soon! Starting with the TSA, of couse.
Holographic Doctor: Hand me a tricorder.
Clueless Crewman: *hands him a tricorder*
Holographic Doctor [annoyed]: A medical tricorder.
..In the not so distant future, you will be randomly searched with a tricorder in violation of your constitution rights on a regular basis
Depending on the resistivity of the antenna, its length is N / 10^12 meters (or *3 in feet). For radio N is ~100. Thus a 100 nm length for a THz frequency.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
TO BALDLY GO, where First Officers go.
Am I the only one that still fears radiation? Or, is it ok now to just blast everybody with heavy doses? Airports, border patrol, and now from police cars. Isnt anyone else worried?
The ship's computer would always oblige when asked where to find a crewman.
"Computer, locate Ensign Smith"
"Ensign Smith is currently in Holodeck 3 running his porn program again"
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
There is no money to be made by early detection and early treatment. Medical industry loves chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension that require a steady stream of patented drugs to be continuously consumed with a steady monetized revenue stream. Tricorder, early detection, bah! humbug. Free markets and unfettered capitalism will take you there. Solution is not socialism but fettered capitalism and fostering competition. But don't hold your breath waiting for it, because the fox is guarding the henhouse.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
> In the not so distant future, every household might have a Star Trek-like tricorder capable of detecting cancer or other diseases."
I find that unlikely. Much more likely: Even though the device itself costs $12 to make, it will be rigidly controlled and only available at high cost (either through insurance premiums or taxes) from your health provider.
I take one of the most common blood pressure medications available. It's so common and the quantities are so high that manufacture is cheap, so the drug is cheap. I don't even bother with insurance -- I pay cash for the drug. (Approx $20 per month.) However, I can only get it by prescription. My doctor requires monthly visits, including a blood pressure check (fairly pointless as I do it myself 3-4 times a week) and a blood test requiring lab work. After insurance, the cost to me is approx $200 a month. They keep my prescriptions on a short leash, designed to run out right at my appointment date. (Sometimes if they're busy my prescription will run out before my appointment, so when I see them I've been off the drug for 3-4 days, unless I call the office and beg for an extension.) The doctor says this is to insure that I keep my appointment. When I point out I have never missed an appointment and don't deserve to be treated like an errant child, I'm informed that all patients are treated this way.
To recap, a common, well tested drug that costs $20 a month (cash -- no insurance) that I've been taking for years costs me $220 a month total to take due to additional visits and tests required by the doctor's office before they'll allow me to continue taking the drug. Based on this business model, even if full ST:TNG-type scanners were available for less than the price of an iPad, I strongly suspect the actual devices will be rigidly controlled by law and only available through expensive doctor's visits.
(In December I told my doctor to shove it. I'm now shopping around for a doctor who doesn't hold my meds hostage.)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
"Captain, the tricorder shows a disturbance in the force."
These are EHF in the terahertz range lying between microwave frequencies and those of infrared light. So "T-rays" would tends to cook you. Nice scanning technology there!
I must be on the cutting edge: I have a T-ray cooker in my kitchen and a T-ray tanning lamp in my storage closet.
Why are you wearing clothes?
I think the radiation issue referred to by many responders is a little exaggerated. It's not like you will get scanned routinely. ('For instance, every time you step on a plane...) It's much more likely that you will be scanned when other symptoms indicate that something is wrong. Test by, if you go to the doctor for a cough, they don't routinely prescribe a chest x-ray.
Or, come to think of it, maybe your doctor does. Practices vary widely. Maybe your exposure would depend on how enamored your doctor is of the technology.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
in 3 2 1
The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled on infrared detectors looking through the walls of a house. They have ruled that you need a warrant for that. Even the fairly authoritarian Scalia was agin' it, IIRC. Certainly this would apply to surreptitious looking inside a person's clothes.
If there's any place you have a reasonable expectation of privacy, it's in your home and under your clothes. "Persons and papers". And by papers they mean your written documents, not things written on sheepskin or hemp rag or whatever anachronistic bullshit people want to claim limits what the founders said.
Yeah, the US has fallen down on that last one.
I see the benefits, but... they're already unwilling to tell us about the toxic results (not to mention, cancer clusters among workers using them) surrounding the existing 'chertoff porno-scanners' as hartmann likes to call them.
Terahertz radiation is not nearly ionizing radiation; it's between infrared and microwave. It can't hurt you unless you use high enough intensities to cause burning.
The awesome thing about terahertz is that can also be used for spectroscopic analysis as well as imaging. The terahertz energies correspond to crystal phonon energies, which means substances and their crystal structure can be determined by a terahertz scan. This means that for security applications, you don't even need to form an image unless the signature of an explosive substance is seen, which reduces privacy concerns of such technology considerably.
The major downside, at least for devices operating at around 1THz, which I've worked on at the University of Leeds, is that water is opaque. Atmospheric water is highly annoying (samples in labs are run in dry nitrogen environments) and a damp cloth would completely block such scans. Many of the commercial devices run at 300GHz, however, so I'm not sure if water is a problem for them.
Seems like this story dropped the lede. The most significant use of this technology will be to detect blood glucose levels without lancing through the skin, making it a less dreaded process for millions of diabetics to monitor their conditions.
The two main groups who will use this device are police and insurance companies. The doctors will shun it since it will change there 300 year old diagnostic model that they cling to for dear life.
Maybe it's because I live in Baltimore and my chance of getting murdered is not too much lower my chance of getting cancer, I'd say forget about scanning for tumors. If they invent something that lets cop cars scan for concealed firearms while they drive down the street, that's at least as much a public health benefit as improved cancer screening. Or does the 2nd amendment mean we have to pretend that getting shot isn't bad for your health? And, just to anticipate to the inevitable psuedo-constitutional argument, what part of "well regulated militia" applies to people with criminal records walking around with unregistered concealed firearms?
Enjoy your T-Ray-Corder.
- Bones
Wake up, get your morning coffee, then into the shower for your morning rinse and medical scan.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
...for the chance to discreetly scan my hot neighbor.
WOOHOO!
The OP seems to be still suffering from the thought that technology is going to cure it all: terrorism, diseases... C'mon, dude. We live in the XXIth century now.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Translation: In the not so distant future, every passing cop will be able to search you without a warrant.
Oh, wait.......
T-rays are a lot like EHF (extremely high frequency), which is used by millimeter wave scanners in airports, medical imaging, and emerging wireless networking standards like WiGig — but stronger, faster, and more detailed. Where EHF radiation can see through your clothes, T-rays can penetrate a few millimeters of skin.
So, where as the body scanners at airports will give you cancer, this thing will give you SUPER CANCER.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
"In the not so distant future, every household might have a Star Trek-like tricorder capable of detecting cancer or other diseases." Yes, that's what it will be used for. That, and only that. Sure.
Where EHF radiation can see through your clothes, T-rays can penetrate a few millimeters of skin. ...
T-ray scanners can detect toxic substances, bombs, drugs...
- that's great, so there will be even more false positives like the one that just happened with senator Rand Paul
Sen. Rand Paul stopped by TSA at Nashville Airport
Kentucky U.S. Senator Rand Paul was held by TSA officials at Nashville International Airport Monday morning after an "irregularity" was found during the security screening process. ...
Aides to the senator said Sen. Paul set off a full body scanning machine going through airport security. Sen. Paul claimed it was a "glitch" and wanted to keep going.
An aide told NBC News that Sen. Paul told the screeners he doesn't have any metal. Apparently it was his right leg that was setting off the scanner. He raised his pant leg and showed them his leg, according to the aide. Paul said it was "clearly a glitch."
The aide said TSA refused to let him re-scan and demanded that he submit to a full body pat down.
The TSA said in a news release that "the passenger" was rebooked on another flight and was rescreened without incident.
You can't handle the truth.
But if you don't have cancer, don't worry, because this device has you covered.
30,000 times smaller - at 100nm that means they were 3mm before, right? why couldnt we have handheld scanners with 3mm antenna in them?
One looks like a flip phone...the other a cigarette lighter
I can see them being stuck on/in all sorts of objects like RFID tags are now, scanning everyone that touches them. Clothes, elevator buttons.. Reporting back all sorts of data that is no ones business.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
To detect what looks like a disk, a back flap, and a scorpion.
Terahertz is 300GHz to 3000GHz frequency band 3*10^8 / 3*10^12 = 1/10 mm. E = 1 millieV 3*10^9/ 3*10^12 = 1/100 mm. E= 10 millieV Terahertz radiation is in the right frequency range, not to be able to focus on cells, or let alone the insides of cells. Even the largest macromolecules would be invisible to it. Also the energy of a Terahertz photon isn't enough to break a single hydrogen bond, DNA would not be damaged.