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ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, future tech, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs.
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A central limitation for SQUIDs is that they must be cooled to extremely low temperatures. They must be placed in a cryogenic environment, typically with a substantial supply of an ultracold substance like liquid helium. For this reason, they cannot be situated very close to the head, which limits their sensitivity to brain signals. “The magnetic signals that come from the neuron activity inside the brain drop off very quickly with distance,” Krüger said.In contrast, the researchers have designed their modular OPMs so that they will be shrinkable and placeable much closer to each other and to the head. “The difference between having a sensor only a millimeter away, like we can do with these new quantum sensors, from the conventional superconducting sensors that are centimetres away, is gigantic,” Krüger said. “That's a game changer.”For most of their history, OPM sensors have mainly been tabletop laboratory devices that are unsuitable for applications like MEG. OPM sensors must integrate numerous components to work. They function by shining a laser through a gaseous vapor and measuring the amount of light that passes through and hits a photodetector. The strength of this light correlates with the magnetic field strength, allowing researchers to infer the latter.“A lot of people up to this point in research have been concentrating on getting single sensors and improving single sensor performance,” said Thomas Coussens, the paper’s first author, to Motherboard. “But no one's really been focusing on the problem from the beginning as a multi-sensor array issue, where, from the outset, you're thinking, how do I make this array scalable?”“That’s a game changer”
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