Laser Technology & Seeing With Your Tongue?
by Josh Desmarais
This is the finale for this tiny corner of the features section of the VCHS Warrior. Unless if some latter journalism-child picks up the torch left behind this year, this boring section will be no more! Ah, but the future is not the subject of this section, the future is the subject of this section, and what a future it is. Everyone does know, however, that the future will be better tomorrow, and the future is no exception.
For one subject rather oft-associated with giant metal robots and rampaging aliens in the future, laser weapons have entered on the field of making people fall over and stop breathing. Despite major setbacks and failures in the 1980s, funding was once again allowed for laser weapon research and development, and my, what a development has taken place. Capable of blasting a hole through a 1” thick piece of carbon steel in 0.25 seconds, these tools promise a new and frightening frontier in warfare, as, if the weapons can puncture steel in less than a second, then they can likely more than puncture current typical protection for soldiers. The weapons currently have immense power and advantages of essentially infinite ammunition reserves and completely silent operation, but they lack the range of current conventional bullet-spewing firearms, reaching a bit under a mile compared to the rather longer range for normal guns. One of them also has a disadvantage in that it must “cool down”, or rather, allow for the particles it draws power from to calm down after so many shots in a given period of time.
While on a militant spin, the key to the warrior of the future may well not lie completely in just hearts, muscles and other such typical tissues – researchers have been probing into the uses that the human tongue might hold for extra sensory perceptions. Hundreds of tiny electrodes are attached to a small sonar device and then placed on the user’s tongue. The electrodes deliver signals that the sonar device receives, letting the user sense the outline of objects. Testers have successfully used it to find tiny objects underwater, and blind people were able to “see” again, sensing people, doorways and even catching things thrown to them. While this does not have many implications for the average citizen, as with the lasers, it is a good thing to know of as warfare enters a whole new level.
On a less warlike note, scientists have recently successfully created a mockup of a compound insect eye. That is to say, they have successfully created a compound lens that measures out to be the size of a pin’s head. They have yet to actually link it up to any device to take input from it, but the feat in itself is rather astounding, as 8,700 tiny lenses had to be created and placed together in any working manner. The creation of such an intricate imaging bit also holds positive implications for the future – artificial retinas may not be too difficult to make, and the lens is small enough that if a similar imaging device were hooked up with it, mapping out the insides of a person could be made as easy as swallowing a rather small object.
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