Suspending Particles in 3D With Nothing But Sound!

Remember these words....Acoustic Levitation.

From the Hack A Day blog:

• Using a series of standing ultrasound waves, it is possible to suspend small particles at the sound pressure nodes. The acoustic axis of the ultrasound beam is parallel to gravity, which also allows the objects to be manipulated along the fixed axis by varying the phase or frequencies of the sound. By adding a second ultrasound beam perpendicular to the first it is possible to localize the pressure node, or focal point, and levitate small objects around a 2D plane.

Here is the Youtube video that will blow your mind!




And here is the url for the Hack A Day article HERE

Don Pettit and the Space didgeridoo

Don Pettit, aboard the ISS, once again is putting water drops on his speakers. This time instead of constant tone from a signal generator, Don has fashioned a Didgeridoo out of materials at hand (which happen to be the station's vacuum cleaner hoses) with various attachments to change the tone and ultimately the behavior of the water drops on the speakers. Check out the video of Don
Oh and this is off time activities. He is not playing with hoses and water drops on NASA's dime. Check the video out.

Get Smart's Cone of Silence now a reality?

Shaun Saunders points out an article in NewScientist. Do you remember Get Smart? Well recall that big plastic dome that came down whenever Max wanted to confide in the chief. What made it comical is that it never seemed to work.

Well that is a thing of the past it would seem. Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are being patented!

From the article:

• Instead of plastic domes, they use a sensor network to work out where potential eavesdroppers are, and speakers to generate a subtle masking sound at just the right level.

To make the system work:

• The walls of the room must be peppered with light-switch-sized units that include a microphone, a speaker, an infrared location sensor and networking circuitry connected to a server.

The idea is to have the system beam white noise and randomized office noise at the potential eavesdropper.

Honest! Read more here

Microwaves for Crowd Control

As Shaun puts it, disgusting example of how MallCity is now 2 steps closer. - From NewScientist online -

A US company claims it is ready to build a microwave ray gun able to beam sounds directly into people's heads.

Yep that that's right, microwaves beamed right into your skull! oh and it get even blacker!

The device – dubbed MEDUSA exploits the microwave audio effect, in which short microwave pulses rapidly heat tissue, causing a shockwave inside the skull that can be detected by the ears. A series of pulses can be transmitted to produce recognizable sounds.

umm and this is safe becaaaaaaaaaaause? I mean do I have to go any futher? They heat up your gray matter to such a point that it causes a shockwave and they do it long enough that you start hearing voices? We are talking about something so much worse than the brown note here folks! Yes, that rushing noise you hear in your ears is your brains draining out your nasal cavities! So, you want more? Oh yes, it gets worse!

MEDUSA involves a microwave auditory effect "loud" enough to cause discomfort or even incapacitation and normal audio safety limits do not apply since the sound does not enter through the eardrums.

If you want to read more of this madness click < more >

Have You Heard Scifi's Wilhelm Scream?

Oh I bet you have! I am now ruined for life, but it was done in a most entertaining manner. It seems that movie sound mixers have been having some fun with us for YEARS. In what way you ask? Well for one, the Wilhelm Scream. And what is that you ask innocently? Well as IO9 online writes: You've probably heard the Wilhelm Scream dozens of times in different movies and television shows without realizing it, but it's one of those things that once you hear, you'll always be able to identify it afterwards. It's now become an in-joke amongst sound editors who try to insert it into their films whenever there's a perfect moment that just needs an over-the-top scream. It began as a Warner Bros. stock sound effect, but was revived and put to serious use by Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt. Now the thing just won't die.

I was laughing so hard by the time this little film was over, ruined but entertained. Because, now, you will alway be able to spot the Wilhelm Scream anytime you hear it. And movies will never be the same again....for me. I love it!

Click here for the complete article

New billboard puts voices in your head

Well we have read about billboard that can track you, computer programs that can tell who you are even if you have a disguise on and we all know how insidious online marketing is in targeting specific product to you. Shaun has shown us a world where all this is just around the corner with his mallcity and infoscreens. Well as scary as that sounds, advertisers have stepped up and gone one better. There's a new add in Soho in Manhattan that uses a speaker beaming down an "audio spotlight" that only you can hear, making it sound like it's coming from inside your own head.
So it is now possible to not only aim an exact product at you, but as you move, it moves with you and now they can target sound for such an ad, just for you, beamed right AT you.

complete article

Scientists say nerves use sound, not electricity

The common view that nerves transmit impulses through electricity is wrong and they really transmit sound, according to a team of Danish scientists. (oh I can already see this is going to be fun!..pac)

According to the traditional explanation of molecular biology, an electrical pulse is sent from one end of the nerve to the other with the help of electrically charged salts that pass through ion channels and a membrane that sheathes the nerves. That membrane is made of lipids and proteins.

The Copenhagen University researchers argue that biology and medical textbooks that say nerves relay electrical impulses from the brain to the rest of the body are incorrect.

"For us as physicists, this cannot be the explanation," said Thomas Heimburg, an associate professor at the university's Niels Bohr Institute. "The physical laws of thermodynamics tell us that electrical impulses must produce heat as they travel along the nerve, but experiments find that no such heat is produced."

Heimburg and Jackson theorize that sound propagation is a much more likely explanation. Although sound waves usually weaken as they spread out, a medium with the right physical properties could create a special kind of sound pulse or "soliton" that can propagate without spreading or losing strength.

submitted my Shaun Saunders