The World's First "Nano-Ear" Can Listen to the Songs of Bacteria
The 'Nano-Ear' Courtesy: APS via Physics WorldHearing sounds smaller than any we've ever heard before German researchers have turned an optical tweezer device into the world's first "nano-ear" capable of detecting sounds six orders of magnitude below the threshold of human hearing. Using an optically trapped gold nanoparticle as their listening device, the team says they can now detect sounds made at the bacterial level or use their device to tune (or perhaps to test?) the minuscule MEMS machines of the future. The nano-ear is pretty simple, considering that it relies on technology that has been laying around in the lab for decades now. Optical tweezers are laser devices that use light to trap or manipulate a small particle in a particular point in space by drawing the particle to the most intense point in the laser beam's electric field. By trapping a gold nanoparticle in just such a optical trap...