| Visualizing the Invisible |
| Synthetic Apreture Radar gives satelites a view of the contour beneath desert sand. |
| Solar-blind UV corona viewer uses light emitted in a region of the ultra-violet spectrum that cannot penetrate the upper atmosphere. The video signal is superimposed with that of the visible image. Startling imagery reveals ball-lightning surrounding bad insulators on high-tension lines. |
| Backscatter infra-red imagery is mixed with visible imagery to see otherwise invisible sulfur hexafluoride gas plumes emanating from leaks in gas insulated switchgear and busswork. |
| Steadman Device uses infra-red beams to smog-check passing vehicles (measunring carbon monoxide). |
| Very Long Baseline Interferometry uses widely seperated radiotelescopes to collect imagery immune to atmospheric distortion, for precise rotational measurement of celestial bodies in distant galaxies. |
| Scanning Tunneling Electron Microscope measures contours using leakage current between a needle and a surface. Piezeoelectric actuators move the needle while current is held constant. Invented by a youngster, it can resolve individual atoms. |
| Infra-Red viewing is now commonplace. Sony came out with a camcorder featuring Infra-Red sensitivity. Pulled from the market, the Infra Red filter "undressed" bystanders with broad daylight. |
| Mars Polar Orbiter used gamma-ray interferometry to map water in polar regions. |
| SOHO (solar heliospheric observatory) is located in a gravitational-null between the earth and the sun. Solar prominences are constantly monitored. Magnetic storms trigger advance warning an hour before heavy particles get to earth. |
| Doppler RADAR allows wind speed and direction to be remotely monitored. |
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| Radiation in space: |
| Acoustic and seismic subterrainian imaging is done with Metrolaser brand systems. |
| Terahertz rays (THz rays) also "undress" people, to 1 cm resolution. |
| Flir made a cool heads-up display IR Thermography viewer. It had the look and feel of ordinary safety glasses. The product release was short-lived. Perhaps it was "too good" for civilians. |
| Alaska Department of Fish & Game workers suspected a shotgun was being used to kill protected-species waterfowl. They passed the corpses through an airport baggage scanner and saw shot-pellets inside. Free X-ray scans! |
| Spread Spectrum RADAR uses a high-voltage step-change rich in odd-harmonics to form a wavefront with new probative qualities. This advance sends all present jammer-technology back to the proverbial drawing board. It can also detect stealth-technology that would go unseen using conventional RADAR. |
| Project Haystack at MIT Lincloln Labs uses a millimeter-wave radar to track space junk. The pilot program successfully tracked a one-inch ball-bearing, released from the space-shuttle cargo-bay, in orbit. |
| DNA sequencers resolve a genetic fingerprint down to it's four constituent components and sequence. Stored as computer data, Polio was created from scratch in the lab. We can encode DNA too. To do so we wash ceramic spheres with the four constituent enzimes in a succession with desired ordering. A mini "cookie-cutter" cuts a plug out of the resulting "skin." Like a core-sample, the plug is no diffirent from a natural strand of DNA. Polymerase Chain Reaction is used to replicate it for usable quantities. |
| A thin layer of Palladium over glass is normally transparent. The presence of hydrogen makes it appear silvered. Also conductive when appearing metalic, electrical properties indicate hydrogen concentration. Applied to nanotubes, a discreet hydrogen detect switch results. |