Covid testing, sci-fi style

Published May 7, 2020

How can you make coronavirus testing better? By using lasers, of course. It’s called Raman spectroscopy” and the idea is to use a laser on a sample … and then it gets even cooler:

Once a sample is collected, a spectrometer measures the interatomic vibrations that result from shining the light on the collected viruses. Each virus has its own signature vibrations, which act as a sort of optical fingerprint that can distinguish the coronavirus from, for example, the virus that causes influenza.

It’s an AI that does the fingerprinting, too. So you blast a sample with a laser, measure its atomic vibrations, and have an artificial intelligence determine what virus it is. Welcome to the future.

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