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Dr. Who's Sonic Screwdriver a Step Closer To Reality
cylonlover writes "A University of Dundee research team led by Prof. Mike MacDonald has demonstrated that both levitation and twisting forces can be applied to an object by application of ultrasonic beams. The team of physicists at the University of Dundee in Scotland (with associates at Bristol University in England) have succeeded in generating an ultrasonic vortex beam strong enough to lift and rotate a rubber disk submerged in water. This latest breakthrough is part of a wide-ranging U.K. research effort to develop a device not unlike the "sonic screwdriver" made famous by the TV series Doctor Who." We covered the beginning of the sonic screwdriver project by Bristol University engineers a little over a year ago.
I see what you did there.
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To bad the sonic screwdriver got turned into a "Magic Wand" in the new series. Now it does anything the writers want it to do.
Yes, but it's still not psychically actuated, so not as close as you think..
The funny thing about this is that most of what the Doctor actually does with the sonic screwdriver would be better achieved by an IR/RFID transponder than some form of sonic levitation.
Mostly they use the sonic screwdriver as: an environmental sensor, to grab data from a computer (presumably using existing wireless hardware), or to open a locked door (presumably by spoofing a key-fob or similar).
Only rarely do they do things like weld wire, open a purely mechanical lock, or actually drive a screw.
I bet THEIR Sonic Screwdriver works on WOOD!
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
In the series the screwdriver can do just about anything as long as it's not wood that it's working on (or some biological stuff). The good Doctor uses it to do just about everything. I seriously doubt we have the ability to create a magical device that can by pointing at a computer made by an alien species do what we want.
I'm holding out for K9.
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I've not heard of "ultrasonic vortex beams" before (props to whoever came up with that name). What would the maximum weight of the levitated object be before the ultrasonic effects started to become destructive, or is that not even a problem? Could we levitate a car (for example), or is this limited to very cool but not very useful lab experiments like superconductor levitation is right now?
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Sorry, I'm going to be a little pedantic here, but the sonic screwdriver doesn't really have any set of capabilities to emulate. Something like the tricorder at least has some vague definition-- it's a set of sensors that can tell you about the material composition and structure of items at a distance.
But the sonic screwdriver? How the device works is something like, "point it at anything in order to get the writers out of the corner they've painted themselves into". There's nothing that it can not do, except apparently that it doesn't work on wood. How are you going to build that, and how will you know when you've succeeded?
It chases away vermin with its ultrasonic screeching.
This is a case of feature creep.
In Fury from the Deep it was used to open things--exactly how you'd expect a futuristic, but single purpose, device to work. He uses it to weld in the Dominators, which is the start of it getting extra properties. The War Games again uses it to open things, but it became an out of control plot device soon after that.
That's why they destroyed it in the Visitation. The new series brought it back and it seemed to have been an out of control plot device from the very start.
So.. in the age of overenforcement of the copyright law, will the owner of "Dr Who" sue the for trying to reproduce something from the show?
It's still pretty damn cool. I mean, c'mon - moving shit with sound? I can see this tech coming in handy for shipwreck recovery, among other applications I haven't thought of yet...
Wonder how well it works outside a liquid medium...
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I wonder how it does on deadlock seals? Or baby seals, for that matter.
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Everything works...in theory.
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"I've been wanting to get my hands on one of these female models. And look I've got a pair of Dalek bumps too." - "Those aren't bumps doctor....."
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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I still want to see them reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!!!!
"Dr. Who's Sonic Screwdriver a Step Closer To Reality"
"application of ultrasonic beams"
Surely what we're making here is an ultrasonic screwdriver.
Wait for this to be weaponized.
I was torn between Kate bush's Experiment IV or Dune's "The Weirding Way" so I put both
http://youtu.be/TQeP6GWU0e4
http://youtu.be/a6hvNe11r9U
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In case you haven't noticed, most science fiction TV is really fantasy fiction.
The things they do on shows like Who and Star Trek and Stargate are impossible in the real world, just like Harry Potter is impossible. The only show that could be called Science fiction is Babylon 5, though it too made some errors (the whitestar measured -400 celsius temperature on Jupiter). It's hard to make real honest-to-goodness science-based stories, especially on a TV schedule with one episode filmed every 10 days.
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Don't you mean Gary Seven's Servo is almost a reality?
...but shouldn't it be that reality took a step closer to the sonic screwdriver, and not the other way around?
Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks, "Hey, this could be more sonic!"?
That's because they're not really supposed to be science based. Any good science fiction is about the people involved, not the technology. The tech is just a backdrop.
Light for Tractor beams, Sound for 'Screwdrivers'. Okay.
The technology may be the backdrop but it's supposed to be realistic. Imagine a science fiction story set in the present, and it had Americans simply teleporting themselves to work by saying, "I want to go to work." That's not science; that's not reality or even possible. It's fantasy fiction.
The whole point of SCIENCE-based fiction is to put the emphasis on making an imaginary world that couls exist in the real world. That's why scifi is often predictive of future events. (Whereas junk like Harry Potter isn't predictive of anything.)
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As much as they want to call it "Sci Fi," Doctor Who is fantasy, and the sonic screwdriver is nothing short of a magic wand.
The whole of Series 5 should have clinched that for anyone paying attention. In order to save the universe, the Doctor had to reboot it, requiring him to cease to exist, although he could be brought back as soon as Amy remembered him? It was even openly admitted that it was a Fairy Tail. This isn't sci fi. As soon as you let go of that, you can start to enjoy it again, like pure fantasy or perhaps some combo like what Piers Anthony liked to write about.
Detecting then not working on biological stuff would be good. Intense ultrasound kills cells. Ok, apoptosis (the cells commit suicide).
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
...I want the psychic paper.
Oops...sorry...wrong plot device! Carry on!
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Imagine a science fiction story set in the present
Ok...
and it had Americans simply teleporting themselves to work by saying, "I want to go to work."
Still with you...
That's not science; that's not reality or even possible. It's fantasy fiction.
And now you've lost me. Obviously in our reality that is not presently possible, but why is it impossible in your fictional "present day"? The only way you could call it a "science fiction story set in the present" is if events in its past differed from events in our past. Like, say, the splitting of the atom caused a wildly different path to be taken than the one that was taken in our reality. And since events differ, how can you say with such certainty that such capabilities would be impossible?
If you're trying to claim that everything in your "science fiction" story can be done with current tech, then in what way is it science fiction? It'd be like me saying I'm going to watch a chess tournament, but turning on the super bowl.
Dr. Who brushes over technical details with a generalized summation, at least they did it more in the older series. The new series has some Star Trek nerd BS that rubbed off on it where they feel the need to explain more detailed BS while in the old shows they rarely went into any more detail than necessary to the story. They were/are also more realistic in the sense that some expert (in a hurry) describes things to laymen in a simple metaphorical summation.
It is rarely ever used like a screwdriver.
Character: "What's that?" Doctor: "Its my sonic screwdriver."
Simple description for something that is just a tool to move the plot along quicker.
These days the sonic screwdriver is much more like a magic wand; but then the stories have become more fantasy in recent years.
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You just described the backdrop of the RedAlert game series, including splitting the atom being the catalyst of new tech that we would have had at present day.
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Give me a reverse-ratcheting router any day. When was the last time you saw a sonic screwdriver break the seal on a stembolt?
Next they'll make it talk so it can say "Damnit Doctor, I'm a screwdriver, not a blow-torch!"
Any "sci-fi" set in the present would either be better classified as "fantasy", or perhaps "alternate reality" (parallel universe). The point of sci-fi is that it's in the future, and we have no idea what technology will look like then. We can make some educated guesses, but if you go far enough into the future, it's easy to explain away just about anything that seems impossible. Just because we think something is physically impossible now doesn't mean it really is; not so long ago, everyone thought heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible. Today, we're discovering lots of metamaterials with very strange properties, which may make things like cloaking devices a reality sooner than we expected.
To be "sci-fi", it really just needs to 1) be in the future, and 2) make a reasonable attempt at explaining away the seeming impossibilities using technology based on science that isn't too far from our current understanding (otherwise it'd just be "magic"). No, this isn't "hard sci-fi", but that's a subcategory all its own which is far more limited. The better sci-fi doesn't go overboard with technobabble, and explores human situations and dynamics, or possibly the effect of certain revolutionary technologies. The original Star Trek was famous for exploring present-day social problems using a fictional future setting, to avoid offending people too much and making them think outside the box. There's a lot more freedom in exploring, for instance, racism in the 1960s when you're depicting a future society where contact with aliens is commonplace, than to actually make a film or TV show depicting it in the present day ("present" being ~1967). Star Trek wasn't the first in this regard; the original Twilight Zone did a lot of the same stuff, but with an even smaller budget and even worse effects.
"Can't you just Sonic that?"
To which the Doctor replied, "This is not a weapon, it's a Screwdriver! You did not understand a single thing I tried to explain to you..."
Afterwards, he got back in the TARDIS and departed, leaving those researchers at the point where this article finds them today.
Nothing to see here -- move along now...
So Stargate and Fringe aren't Sci-Fi?
(even if Fringe is *BAD* sci-fi sometimes)
Where'd you get the idea that it had to take place in The Future? What about stories that are purely psychological or sociological in nature?
Daniel Klugh
The technology may be the backdrop but it's supposed to be realistic. Imagine a science fiction story set in the present, and it had Americans simply teleporting themselves to work by saying, "I want to go to work." That's not science; that's not reality or even possible. It's fantasy fiction.
Not into telecommuting, are you? "I want to go to work in my underwear!" works all the time for me..
I'm not really sure how a story that's purely psychological or sociological qualifies as "sci-fi", rather than simply "drama". Just because psych and sociology are sciences doesn't make a story "sci-fi"; the term doesn't mean just any science, it's normally associated with the future, yet-to-be-invented technologies, aliens & spaceships, etc. Ask some random stranger on the street if a movie about sociology set in the present day is "sci-fi" and he'll say "no".
You make a good case with Stargate and Fringe, but those still have some important elements of sci-fi: fictional technologies, travel to other worlds (or dimensions), etc. They're set in the present day, however, they're either what you could call "alternate reality/parallel universe" stories, or basically positing that there's secret technological things going on that the general public has no idea about because of a conspiracy to keep them secret. But make no mistake, these shows wouldn't be considered "sci-fi" by anyone but Slashdot pedants if they didn't rely on technological devices for their plots (namely stargates and whatever the Fringe series used for its inter-dimensional activities). If they were just about secret goings-on by government-affiliated groups with no aliens, no other worlds or dimensions, and no technological devices to achieve these things, then they'd be just as sci-fi as "24", which no one would say in their right mind would claim as sci-fi.
realistic? meaning having impressive sounding techno-babble? lovable androids? cuddly wookies and critters? Jordi, make me a tachyon phase modulator, and have it done and solving our problem in an hour less commercial breaks. Can't think of a plot this week, no problem says the writers, holodeck and/or Q time!
no popular science fiction series is in any way realistic, it's all impossible fantasy and nonsense, and all unscientific in the extreme.
That especially bothered me because in "Turn Left" we saw what actually would happen if the Doctor ceases to exist. Each problem he wasn't there to fix just made things worse and worse. But now suddenly he ceases to exist and everything's fine?
>>>The point of sci-fi is that it's in the future
Stupidest comment of the week. There's a lot of science fiction set in the present, or even some in the past (such as explaining how Jack the Ripper was actually an alien doing a brief Earth visit/experiment).
The thing that separates *science* fiction from *fantasy* fiction is that the first can happen in the real world, while the second can not. This is self-evident in the very naming of each genre.
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But with that definition, *regular* fiction counts as *science* fiction.
Sure, in our reality we cannot teleport to work. But we don't know everything. As such, how can you say with such certainty that, if past events had unfolded differently, we would not be able to teleport to work simply by saying "I want to go to work"?
Or put another way, how does science fiction set in the present differ from regular fiction?