Microwave ray gun promises to put sounds in people's heads
By Donald Melanson 
posted July 7th 2008 3:44PM
posted July 7th 2008 3:44PM
As we've seen countless times, ray guns can employ any number of less than lethal means to stop their targets in their tracks, and it looks like the Sierra Nevada Corporation is making some progress on one of the more novel methods, with its MEDUSA system apparently able to beam sounds into people's heads. According to NewScientist, that's done by exploiting the "microwave audio effect," which uses short microwave pulses to rapidly heat tissue and cause a "shockwave inside the skull." The system (not exactly as pictured above), is also apparently also able to be fine-tuned enough to produce recognizable sounds, and the company claims that it's now ready to actually start building 'em in earnest. The US Navy, who funded the research, still seems to be staying mum on that last point though.
[Via Slashdot, image courtesy NASA.gov]
[Via Slashdot, image courtesy NASA.gov]
My thoughts exactly.
As a test subject, I can tell you it has no lasting consequences. In fact, after the test trials, I was suddenly able to operationalize my synergies and move into a management position!
@gadget. Or were they put there by a microwave? ;)
If a beam goes into my head, I will shout "Rape!" quicker then you can say 'Microwave'.
Great point. This device, and others like it are a form of mental rape. Our government is using our tax dollars to create brain-rape devices.
...I didn't say I was complaining about the rape....
8-)
Its used as a weapon.
What would a bullet be considered? Physical rape? Nah, we already have that.
am I the only one who's brave enough to say that that ray guns is held in quite an akward position?
I can't wait for my brain to get the RRoD. Hooray for technology!
This is more creepy than those 'tannoys' used during WW2 by the Nazis, where they would put out messages in France over loudspeaker to the Allied soldiers in an attempt to break morale.
Those are mighty big ale pale'n machines.
Dibs on the killing sound.
Mini Me! Quit humping the laser!
Sensationalism at its finest.
I love how we went from "fine-tuned enough to produce recognizable sounds" to "the gov'ment is controlling mah thoughts!!!11!".
I'm willing to bet that not only is this device incapable of "beaming" subliminal messages into your head, instead maybe producing a sound that might be mistaken for a car horn or bird whistle, but in order to even do THAT it must be finely tuned and focused on a single subject. In other words, the government isn't going to be able to make a bunch of these, point them in the general direction of your neighborhood and brainwash you into voting for John McCain.
This is a device (as another commenter above pointed out) that will be mainly used as a non-lethal crowd-control device. I recall reading a story someplace a while ago about a cruise ship traveling off the coast of Africa with no weapons on board and was set upon by pirates. They used an early version of this device to incapacitate the pirates and force them to withdraw with no loss of life.
Clearly, a horrible invention indeed. Anything to fuel your irrational fear and hatred of military research, I guess.
no but image walking down the street with your ipod, listening to music, and then all of a sudden you start hearing commercials in your brain. you cant do anything but listen to them. it's invasion of personal privacy.
unless, of course, you could use this tech to beam music into your brain.
"No Jim, you're doing it all wrong. You gotta step into it, get down low on it, get it down low and in real deep. There it is, there's daddy's sweet spot."
Please say you didn't.
There are actually some benevolent uses for this. I could see it being helpful in search and rescue situations, or for communication when other means have failed. With that said though, it's still scary. Might have to have a Faraday cage grafted into my skull in the near future...
Wasn't this same thing used on Steve Austin in the "Bigfoot" episode of "The Six Million Dollar Man"? ... from the 70s ... which I saw upon its original airing ...
Jesus, I'm old ...
And most importantly: Does is play the 'brown' noise?
Sorta takes the heat of getting cancer from your cell phone, doesn't it?
Maybe they can make headphones like this, you can avoid disturbing your neighbors, AND as an added bonus it will fry your brain like angel dust.
If you generate the brown note this way, does that give you a brain fart?
people don't seem to understand. by the time we hear about a military technology like this, it is something they had 20 years ago. this technology has been built upon and already deployed on top secret satellites. american citizens, enemies of the government, and helpless guinea pigs have been tortured and driven to horrible things. nobody will believe a word you say, when you think the govt. is beaming messages into your head. these weapons are not intended to fight our enemies, only for complete controll of its citizens. they have been quietly working towards this for decades. people just don't see it. cellphones are tracking devices for the govt. it's already too late to revolt. we wouldn't stand a chance.
I voted you down before I got very far into your comment, and it was only once I finished reading your comment that I realized you were being sarcastic, and therefore deserved a high rank if anything.
You were being sarcastic, weren't you?
not even a little.
two words: rick roll
This is REALLY old news. WIRED reported on it 6 years ago.
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/02/50483
Dude, that's ultrasonic sound not microwave sound. Nice try though.
You can send a narrow beam of inaudible ultrasonic sound waves that agitate the surrounding air to produce audible noises within their path. Or you can pulse microwaves over a large area that, if tuned appropriately, heat up tissue and produce vague noise coming from inside your skull. Big difference.
And I'm rather p.o.'d that my avatar STILL won't work.
So, does anyone have the specs on how Magneto developed his helmet, or do we have to wing it and hope for the best?
Oy vey.
Omg omg the evil Republican government has elliptical sonic reflective dishes!! If they point them at me and put a loudspeaker in the middle, they'll be beaming noises into my head!
Uh, yep.
Even if these microwave intra-cerebral noisemakers could actually generate meaningful sounds (highly doubtful) it would just be a slightly more effective version of an elliptocally-reflected loudspeaker. It's not like they can point it at one specific person in a huge crowd - not without the people around him hearing the same thing. It's just that you wouldn't be able to pick it up without a special microphone.
And seriously, come on. The differences in cranial volume and structure are so vast over any segment of the population that you could never have a single microwave system that would produce intelligible sounds for more than a tiny percentage that the operators wouldn't be able to predict. And that would be if everything is perfect.
Think physics, people.
This will be used for crowd control, hostage situations, and potentially battlefield shock-and-awe. It's almost certain that you could never have consistent information being transferred. Gosh, if you even turned your head slightly the reflective/refractive indices would change and you'd have a totally different sound.
Why don't you want less-than-lethal weapons??!! Oh, yeah - they look like giant phalli. Good point. We don't want to turn the Muslims gay, after all.
the system does not rely on your skulls size, but it does use your skull as a median to produce the sound. the fine tuning they are talking about is getting the frequencies created in the brain via tissue to be the correct frequencies that we hear. Just like the current technology that uses your cartilage to reproduce sound that you can feel, it does not rely on your body's mass.
...and everyone laughed at me for all those years for wearing my aluminium foil helmet...it stopped the damned Martians and it'll stop the damned US of A military as well..!!!
Yes... Yes we did. And we will continue.
I'm not taking the piss but isn't 'putting sounds in peoples heads' the purpose of a regular speaker?