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A pair of researchers, one with the Public University of Navarre, the other with the University of Bristol, has developed a system of holographic acoustic tweezers that can be used to manipulate multiple objects simultaneously in 3-D space. Asier Marzo and Bruce Drinkwater describe their tweezers and possible uses for them in their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Holographic laser tweezers are familiar to researchers, but they can only be used to move around micro-scale objects. In this new effort, Marzo and Drinkwater take the idea of holographic tweezers into the realm of sound and in so doing have created a system capable of manipulating a host of larger objects simultaneously.
The article shows various macro-scale objects the researchers have been able to manipulate. They suggest the technology can be refined to perform non-invasive surgery, among other applications.
Sonic screwdrivers, here we come?
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday December 19 2018, @09:47PM
(disclaimer: I RTFA - the original one [pnas.org] is Open Acess)
1. No info on the sonic pressures involved - they only mention that they manipulated spheres of expanded polystyrene and for manipulating 12 of them they used 9.5W of power. Around 20 (the max limit they achieved without experiencing a significant number of undesirable focii) they needed to scale the power to 57W.
More on this later
2. Unlike the optical analogs, where the particles are trapped in maxima, the acoustic trap uses nodes (i.e. oscillation minima) to trap the particles.
Which means, to manipulate an object inside one's body one will need to create a node surrounded by maxima. How strong the "tweezers" need to be? Depends on what you want with the "suspended" object - if you want to move it, the "depth" of the potential energy will need to be large enough to overcome the resistance of the medium.
Which may mean a maxima/minimum differential pressure large enough to liquefy the surrounding biological tissue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford