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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...
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.
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.
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...
Why not? This is Slashdot, where every delusional sci-fi daydream is the equivalent of actual, real engineering. Space Elevator? Simple. Terraforming Mars? Child's play. Mining asteroids? Slam dunk! Life extension? AHHHHHH THE DEVIL!!! NO!!!!!!!!!
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...
And what does "two orders of magnitude stronger" mean?
Around 100 time stronger.
which is totally what she said
Summaries aren't meant to be complete explanations of everything you need to know. They're meant to be short. If you don't understand a word, look it up on Google, Bing, Yahoo, Duck Duck Go or whatever other search engine you favor.
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."
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.
Log scale: 10^2 = 100 = 2 orders of magnitude. Still a bit nonsensical to say 30,000 times smaller though. Most of us can't really get a handle on what that means (although 100 nm might also be hard to grasp for some).
DNA -- National Dyslexic Association
in 3 2 1
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.
So "T-rays" would tends to cook you.
Funny! Like saying, "Cell phones use microwave radiation, so OMG I'm being cooked by my phone!" Sadly, there are idiots of the kind you're parodying who really don't understand anything about power levels and who really do give credence to such nonsensical thinking, which is something I call "argument from abstraction": "X is a member of abstract category C. Y is also a member of abstract category C. Y has effect E, therefore X has effect E." It's nothing but a special for of undistributed middle, but it's common enough to deserve its own name, I think.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
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.
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.
Yeah, I hate when people say "30,000 times smaller" or "5 times slower". I know what they mean by it, but it doesn't really make sense.
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.
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.
Actually it's a perfectly valid way of reasoning.
Just because you tend to have a more deductive process does not mean, probablistic inference is invalid or "silly".
For example, Let X = Car and Y = Truck and C = Motorvehicles.
When cars use up energy (burn fuel), on average, most of the time, they are travelling forward. The could certainly be stationary and reversing as well, but that is not what the argument is stating. Similarly we might expect the same behavior from trucks.
The two are not deductively linked, however there is a belief that is greater than 0, that get's created. To say, "one can know *nothing*", is dogmatic and untrue. Probabilistic reasoning helps us navigate reality
Does it have errors? Sure, but then so does deduction, eg when someone prides themselves on the logical process, but forgets to use the same rigor on the starting conditions or assumptions.
Both methods have there merits.
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?
Captain, this appears to be a silicone based life form. /spock
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
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 ----
Yeah, I see a lot of silicone forms at Hooters.
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.