DARPA rides the terahertz wave

Devin Coldewey

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts he’d like you to read: The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin His personal website is coldewey.cc. → Learn More

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008


Oh, DARPA. Everything you touch turns to semi-gold. Really, though — DARPA is great because they throw money at practically every cool new technology and even if it doesn’t turn into a neat gun, the residual advances from studying it often yield other interesting technologies. These daysthey’re looking into terahertz waves, those knicker-viewers the Brits were into a few months back.

In this case, I’m sure that while DARPA will be looking for a way to make a gun like the Farsight or the railgun from Eraser, they will more likely just make a better version of what we’ve already got, which isn’t much, “due to a lack of effective means to generate, detect, process, and radiate” the signal. Sounds like we’ve got a long way to go, but any funding directed towards advancing the state of X-Ray Specs is money well spent in this blogger’s opinion.

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