World’s Tiniest Ear of the Day: Researchers at Germany’s University of Munich have developed what’s being called the world’s tiniest ear.
The “nano-ear” is actually a tiny particle of gold, 60 nanometers in diameter, suspended by a laser beam, and it can detect sounds a million times fainter than the best human ears.
It works by recording the movements of the gold nanoparticle as it responds to the acoustic vibrations caused by other nanoparticles when researchers heat them with lasers. Aside from being amazingly sensitive, the nano-ear can also calculate the direction a vibration is coming from.
Researchers say this experiment could launch a whole new field — acoustic microscopy — that would study the sounds emitted by microscopic organisms.
[slashdot]
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