OP’s article (which seems like a press release) says several times that they’re trying to make the device portable. I don’t know what is so hard to understand about that.

Regardless of what your article said, I explained to you the quantum aspects. They are being technically accurate in how they describe the device and what they are attempting to do.

I think you and I arguing is just you being intransigent and mistaken on the original article’s claims. For better or for worse, I am also a very stubborn person, so here we are.

Yea I kinda still do.

Communicating to the public about science advances is about using marketing techniques, not education techniques. It’s business stuff, not science stuff. We have journal articles for the real science. It’s unfortunate, but it’s just the reality with anti-intellectual attitudes running so rampant, where real science makes most people tune out.

Btw, the quantum refers to how the tiny magnetic field is actually detected. The laser shines into some helium, and the helium is set to all have one specific quantum spin. This allows the strength of the field to be consistently measured based on how much the laser gets deflected. Without the ability to manipulate quantum spin, this technology would be unavailable. (I did some more reading on it yesterday. lol) So it is actually pretty quantum stuff apparently.

Well of course it’s an incremental improvement. Nobody but you is claiming anyone invented anything new.

The wearable headset as it sits is still not portable, making it portable would be an excellent, and incremental, yes, advancement.

From a different article:

Although the wearable MEG system is housed inside a magnetically shielded room, it is still essential to cancel out the remnant Earth’s field. To do this, the team constructed a set of bi-planar electromagnetic coils that generate fields equal and opposite to the remnant Earth’s field. The coils – designed on two 1.6 m2 planes, placed either side of the subject – achieved a 15-fold reduction in the remnant field.

Making this portable if possible would be very useful.

No, OPM-MEG is still done with a large machine, where do you think all the wires coming out of the silly hat go? I don’t think you read much at all.

This new generation of MEG lifts limitations that have historically confined scanners to universities, paving the way for mobile systems that can be taken directly to those who will benefit most

Mobile means smaller, so you can move it around. Did you even read the article? They don’t imply they invented something new anywhere, you just made that up.

Nor did they just add “quantum”. The word is featured in the links I provided above about MEG, from the NIH and Yale. Did you even look at those?

This particular research project is working on making the hat smaller, so it’s more portable. That’s what this small team is working on specifically.

Regarding the wording they used, well yeah, you may have some interest in science, but that doesn’t mean the broader public does. If they make people like us, hanging out in a tech community, raise an eyebrow but also generate some buzz among the broader public, that’s probably a smart move on their part. The word “quantum” can do that, the way bigger words like “miniaturization” can’t.

Yeah, that’s fair. I mean, essentially the whole world is “quantum”, given quantum phenomena govern the subatomic particles we’re all made from.

I’ll give these guys a pass, though, they just want good PR for their new research project, so they employed some mild clickbait. Which is fair in today’s world. They’re not technically wrong, lasers are a utilization of quantum physics.

I was a little suspicious at first too, but no, appears legit.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10465236/

https://research.yale.edu/cores/optically-pumped-magnetoencephalography