See? Now that’s reasonable. If the article was about that, it’d be respectable
But instead, it was about quantum brain imaging. It took two science enthusiasts doing adversarial research to get to what the team was actually doing, which is cancelling out the impact of Earth’s magnetic field so opm-meg can be used outside
Do you still think this is good for public engagement?
They go to the fucking lasers. They’re fiber optic cables. The big machine was a device your head was strapped into, and you couldn’t move or you’d disrupt the readings
See? This is what I mean by dishonest. My research took me to other groups who built this tech. If they miniaturized it, it was incremental improvement on the big advancement someone else made
No, see I kept reading. I searched the keywords and went from there. It’s opm-meg, not meg… That’s the big ass machine vs the silly hat
These people aren’t the vanguard. They’re not the ones pushing the limits of the technology… They’re just another group using it
They didn’t even say they were working on miniaturization. Instead they implied they invented a new technology, and added the word quantum before someone else’s invention and presented it as a new technology
The broader public will never care about this either way. This is so specific that it’s barely even popsci…I mean the results might be interesting, starting a study using the latest toy isn’t
The more I think about it, the more dishonest it seems
I think they’re doing themselves a huge disservice though…I mean, my first reaction was “okay, this makes absolutely no sense”, because I have a basic understanding of biology and physics
The technology stands for itself… You can image brain activity with a silly looking hat instead of strapping people into a giant machine. And it’s better than the big machine in every way.
Why would you try to make it mysterious? I could explain to a child why this is cool technology in 30 seconds
Also, I don’t think this team invented the opm tech or even the headset, so they basically bought a medical device, slapped the word magic on it, and pretended like it was this cool new thing they invented
This group is just researching the effects of shooting big guns on the brain. They might spend more on bullets than they did for the hat. They’re using a cool, fairly new, toy that is already in use elsewhere… It feels like they’re just being dishonest TBH
I had to further read on this for a while before anyone actually explained how it works
These are only quantum in a very, very technical sense.
https://laserscientist.com/optically-pumped-magnetometers/
They’re optically pumped magnometers. They shoot lasers at helium to align them and measure how they move in response to magnetic fields.
They’re quantum like a polarizing lens uses quantum effects, no one serious goes around saying they’re wearing quantum sunglasses
Yeah, and what do they mean quantum? You could replace it with the word magic and I don’t think the meaning of the article changes at all
Umm… We absolutely do, solar panels. Constant full exposure to the sun adds up quick, especially when they don’t even need structural support
There’s plenty of problems with this idea, but power is the one strong point
I think he’s hurting for relevance, which means he’s probably broke based on the court cases
Expect to see increasingly crazy shit from him
But the article doesn’t even explain how they’re advancing the technology - it makes it sound like they invented it for this purpose, and mentions nothing about using it outside. How does that help them?
Also, the link I sent you all the way at the beginning describes how the process works… Yes, it’s quantum in that it takes advantage of things happening at the quantum scale. Like polarized lenses
The article I sent you, which l picked because it actually described how the technology works, doesn’t use the word quantum once. It uses the word laser a lot… Which is probably why it’s named optically pumped magnometers
I still think the fact that it took this long and this much further reading for us to understand what the team is actually doing makes it terrible science communication