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Stanford Creates Tricorder-Like Devices For Detecting Cancer and Explosives (stanford.edu)
An anonymous reader writes: A new technology has promise to safely find buried plastic explosives and maybe even spot fast-growing tumors. The technique involves the clever interplay of microwaves and ultrasound to develop a detector like the Star Trek tricorder. The careful manipulation of two scientific principles drives both the military and medical applications of the Stanford work. First, all materials expand and contract when stimulated with electromagnetic energy, such as light or microwaves. Second, this expansion and contraction produces ultrasound waves that travel to the surface and can be detected remotely.
In a potential battlefield application, the microwaves would heat the suspect area, causing the muddy ground to expand and thus squeeze the plastic (abstract). Pulsing the microwaves would generate a series of ultrasound pressure waves that could be detected and interpreted to disclose the presence of buried plastic explosives. Solving the technical challenges of detecting ultrasound after it left the ground gave the Stanford researchers the experience to take aim at their ultimate goal – using the device in medical applications without touching the skin.
In a potential battlefield application, the microwaves would heat the suspect area, causing the muddy ground to expand and thus squeeze the plastic (abstract). Pulsing the microwaves would generate a series of ultrasound pressure waves that could be detected and interpreted to disclose the presence of buried plastic explosives. Solving the technical challenges of detecting ultrasound after it left the ground gave the Stanford researchers the experience to take aim at their ultimate goal – using the device in medical applications without touching the skin.
This story reminds me of the work of Rife.
The short story is that Rife invented a hetrodyning optical microscope that mixed UV light incident on the subject of interest,such as cancer cells, where the mixing difference would reproduce visible light but allow the study of cells while still alive. He then used modulated RF sources to find the resonant point of these cancer cells to mechanically destroy them. The conspiracy theory goes that the established medical community destroyed his work/equipment as his results were too effective.
46137
Stage 4 high explosives.... Self solving problem... I'm sorry sir, you have milliseconds to live once this blows up..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Isn't an MRI, a CT, Ultrasound and X-ray a Tricorder LIKE device?
Not really. If it's not handheld and portable, it's not tricorder-like.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I believe the tricorder's main attributes were:
1) it can scan, analyze, or detect anything
2) it doesn't exist
I wonder which of these attributes they implemented?
"We've been working on this for a little over two years," Khuri-Yakub said. "We're still at an early stage but we're confident that in five to ten to fifteen years, this will become practical and widely available."
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Data: Captain, sensors are picking up 14,387,254,183 gnats on the planet's surface. Picard: What about that Romulan warbird that just activated their cloak 100 meters behind us? Data: We are unable to detect them.