A new microscopic camera lets us peer inside all the things we normally can't see

This new camera can peer through thick materials and behind tiny microchips, even ones that are hidden under heaps of dense silicon components. It sees with a odd form of energy you've probably never heard of before: T-rays.
A team of physicists led by Rayko Stantchev, an imaging researcher at the University of Exeter in the UK, have just developed a radical new type of microscopic camera. Its one that can see hidden objects so small, it could read a message inscribed on the belly of a dust-mite. Rather than taking pictures with the visible light we all see, Stantchev's camera views objects with terahertz radiation, also known as T-rays. As Stantchev explains in a paper published today in the journal Science Advances, these T-rays imbue his new camera with some pretty fantastic properties.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a21156/has-something-better-than-the-x-ray-come-along/

Paper: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/6/e1600190

 

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No way 'mysterious' T-rays will ever compare to the greatest mystery rays of all - Yobba rays:
But back to ho-hum T-rays. Useful indeed for 'stripping boarding passengers naked' at airport security scans (post 9-11 and all that), and a host of less personally invasive applications. As for reading a message on the belly of a dust-mite, yeah probably. However while they may well allow looking through a chip, the inherent resolving power limitations of terahertz band will never allow T-rays to resolve the deeply sub-micron details of modern chip circuitry. Default to X-rays for that chore.

 

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