Posted by Mike on November 16th, 2007 in biology, biometric, sensor

Anyone remember the movie Firefox? In it, Clint Eastwood played a psychically wounded pilot who is tasked with stealing the latest Soviet super weapon jet, which was partially controlled by thoughts. Think “rocket fire” (in Russian of course), and a rocket fired.

This little esoteric piece of technology that the good scientists at NIST have come up with looks to be the key to the development of such technology. Today’s way of doing this magnetic sensing, (which is really what thought patterns are, electromagnetic pulses) is with a SQUID, or SuperConducting qUantum Interference Device, which has to be kept cooled to near absolute zero. This new technology is much smaller, and does not require the extensive cooling.

This new technology takes advantage of some interesting properties of rubidium to sense the presence of a magnetic field. It is entirely possible that in the near future you will be able to control your IPod by thinking of the song that you want to hear, or control your environment, like the temperature in the room by thinking “warmer”. It may be the greatest boon for the couch potato of all time. Think “change to football”, or ” volume up”….

http://www.physorg.com/news113151078.html

Technorati : magnetic sensing