University of Texas Develops Terahertz Scanner that Could Bring Mobile X-ray Type Vision to Reality

A tip of the old electron to my pal Bill Domb for the lead on this story.

It seems there is a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that we really haven't explored with consumer devcies yet. That portion is of the "Terahertz" spectrum.

We've used Gigahertz for wireless networking and BlueTooth, while other parts of the spectrum are used for communication. However, what is cool about this new technology developed by the University of Texas is that it can be used to actually see through things! This means that applications such as actual stud finders or handheld medical scanners that could see inside the body.

The best part of all of this is that, if it works as planned, it would allow all of this to be done with no radiation!!! That's because the terahertz spectrum is between infrared & microwave and does not produce any ionizing radiation.

There could be a lot of really cool applications for this. However so far the scientists are limiting the viewing to 4 inches or less from the source for obvious reasons. Anything that could let you, theoretically, see through anything at any distance would be a tremendous invasion of privacy, but I can see lots of healthcare applications that would speed up delivery of care while decreasing costs.

For the full article from the Mail Online, click here.