Forget old and busted
X-rays,
T-rays are the future, man! It was
only recently that we were discussing Terahertz lasers and their potential to see through paper, clothes, plastic, flesh, and other materials, but that discourse had to end on the sad note that nobody had managed to make them usable in a
practical and economically feasible way. The major hurdle to overcome was the diffusion of Terahertz radiation -- which results in weak, unfocused lasers -- but now researchers from the universities of Harvard and Leeds seem to believe they've managed to do it. Using metamaterials to collimate T-rays into a "tightly bound, high powered beam" will, they claim, permit semiconductor lasers (i.e. the affordable kind) to perform the duties currently set aside for sophisticated machinery costing upwards of $160,000. Harvard has already filed a patent application for this innovation, and if things pan out, we might be seeing body scanners (both for medical and security purposes), manufacturing quality checks, and a bunch of other things using the extra special THz stuff to do their work.
posted August 10th 2010 11:39AM
Matematerials???
@bryoneill11
composite materials which are subwavelength and can manipulate light at the wavelength level
@bryoneill11
No, metamaterials.
"Matematerials" would be more akin to a fleshlight.
@bryoneill11
old news super man could do this since the 50's
@Eastwood for Prez
Superman has XRay vision, not TRay vision... this means he will die in the next issue and 5 issues later will come back with a new TRay vision power!!!
Security and other uses :)
@rommel what kind of other uses?
@squaremon
Studying wood fiber orientation in the manufacturing of oriented strand boards. ;)
@squaremon not for looking at the hot neighbor chick - due to diffusion of the reflected beam you'd have to be close enough that you might as well just take off the T-ray specs and enjoy the show, maybe say hi and buy her a dinner first.
@cicada i was hoping for that! xD
@cicada lolz
Excellent. Yet another breakthrough.
This is pretty rad. One of the physics proferssors on my grad comittee studies terahertz almost exclusively. He does some excellent work, but unfortunately the economical costs are still too high. Stuff like this will make it much more affordable!
Take a look at that image again and think Either Black mesa or portal...Got both lambda and Aperture Science....
ohhh sh*t bring out the lambda
None of this matters until the root it and install 3.0.
Terahertz frequencies now, doesn't that demand that the rays are of factorially higher energies than those of X-Rays?
I dunno, but if so, your average medical X-Ray dosage is going to be an eternity in relation to the amount of time you should spend under the light of a T-Ray machine!