Top TechTop Tech #6: Magnets, fingerprints, and light particles
Highlighting interesting or important innovations with long-term promise.
Today’s News:
No tangles: Wireless earbuds use magnetic induction.
Qualcomm senses fingerprints.
First photo of light as particle and wave
No tangles: Wireless earbuds use magnetic induction
I don’t think “Near Field Magnetic Induction” sounds likesomething I want to have in my ears… but NXP Semiconductors says its NFMItechnology yields wireless audio streaming from ear to ear.
“During sports and fitness activities, the wires of today’searbuds are a genuine inconvenience and can potentially be unsafe,” the companysays. “Truly wireless earbuds would provide substantially increased user comfortfor sport activities, but in general in all situations where wires areundesired and annoying to users.”
Qualcomm senses fingerprints
A new sensor from Qualcomm will use ultrasonic sound waves to scan fingerprints, the BBC reports.
It can work through glass, metal and plastic smartphone covers, Qualcomm claims — as well as sweat, hand lotion, and condensation.
How? Because sound waves actually penetrate the outer layers of the user’s finger, the BBC adds.
First photo of light as particle and wave
Photography captures light… and light, physicists assure us, is both a wave and a particle… but who woulda thought a photograph could show those two states simultaneously?
Swiss and American researchers say they’ve snapped a shot of light’s dual behavior, Discovery reports. Using one of only two of the most advanced electron microscopes, they took a “quantum photograph of light behaving as both a particle and a wave.”
