A new device for underwater hearing

[dmaziuk]

Other than that, you guys don't like it, but in a scientific point of view, the device is interesting, and can be useful in some circumstances, like working underwater, research, etc...

Did anyone actually look at the abstract linked from the article? I get the feeling that somebody got something back-asswards (and it probably wasn't the people who made that thing).

 

[rabe]

Here is the abstract Physical Review Letters - Accepted Paper: Metasurface for water-to-air sound transmission

 

[tursiops]

...and if there is a singing whale in the neighbourhood, your head will explode.



Other than that, you guys don't like it, but in a scientific point of view, the device is interesting, and can be useful in some circumstances, like working underwater, research, etc...
Give it a try!

You STILL do not understand the article. It does NOT help you hear sounds made underwater.

 

[Neilwood]

Personally I like the general peace and quiet underwater - I hope like hell this is not developed for underwater use.

I like the sound of the ultrasound use though - it could make a significant difference to their effectiveness and use. At the moment it is a pretty blunt tool but with an improved sound transmission I would envisage clearer results.

 

[dmaziuk]

You STILL do not understand the article. It does NOT help you hear sounds made underwater.

No offence, but... which part of

We experimentally demonstrate that such a meta-atom increases the transmission of sound at \sim700 Hz by two orders of magnitude, allowing about 30\% of the incident acoustic power from water to be transmitted into air.

did you not understand? (Or, for that matter, water-to-air in the title.)

I think the article in Science is either based on something other that the abstract it is citing, or its author was hallucinating when she wrote it, or I am delusional and words don't mean what I think they mean. (I don't have a particular preference for either option.)

 

[dmaziuk]

I like the sound of the ultrasound use though - it could make a significant difference to their effectiveness and use. At the moment it is a pretty blunt tool but with an improved sound transmission I would envisage clearer results.

Yeah except it sounds like the writer was smoking crack. I think the abstract strongly suggests the device is tuned to specific frequencies and specifically to water-air boundary, so getting ultrasound past human skin -- and back since you need to record the echoes -- sounds, at this point, like a pure pipe dream.

 

[tursiops]

Sorry, I was basing my comments on the original link, not on the Physical Review article. Clearly, the original link is nonsense, and has the whole concept backwards.

 

[dmaziuk]

You should hear professors here talk about stuff that gets peer-reviewed and printed on paper in actual science journals sometimes... welcome to academentia. And of course in my own area every mag's full of specter meltdown the-sky-is-falling-and-I-want-my-mommy articles.

 

[tursiops]

You should hear professors here talk about stuff that gets peer-reviewed and printed on paper in actual science journals sometimes... welcome to academentia. And of course in my own area every mag's full of specter meltdown the-sky-is-falling-and-I-want-my-mommy articles.

I spent most of my career in or around academia, but mostly I heard complaints about how articles like this one in Science (the first link in this thread) written by "free lance science journalists" got it wrong. As this one did.

 

[dmaziuk]

I suspect it's worse when you're comp sci and run computers for biophysicists working for life scentists.