£3.1m is like a yearly salary for a team of hardware engineers. This sounds like a token investment that looks good in a press release, or a token investment that will go into pockets of someone closely associated. Or both.
Yeah, and what do they mean quantum? You could replace it with the word magic and I don’t think the meaning of the article changes at all
I was a little suspicious at first too, but no, appears legit.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10465236/
https://research.yale.edu/cores/optically-pumped-magnetoencephalography
I had to further read on this for a while before anyone actually explained how it works
These are only quantum in a very, very technical sense.
https://laserscientist.com/optically-pumped-magnetometers/
They’re optically pumped magnometers. They shoot lasers at helium to align them and measure how they move in response to magnetic fields.
They’re quantum like a polarizing lens uses quantum effects, no one serious goes around saying they’re wearing quantum sunglasses
Oakley prices to skyrocket as they introduce Quantum Shades
Yeah, that’s fair. I mean, essentially the whole world is “quantum”, given quantum phenomena govern the subatomic particles we’re all made from.
I’ll give these guys a pass, though, they just want good PR for their new research project, so they employed some mild clickbait. Which is fair in today’s world. They’re not technically wrong, lasers are a utilization of quantum physics.
I think they’re doing themselves a huge disservice though…I mean, my first reaction was “okay, this makes absolutely no sense”, because I have a basic understanding of biology and physics
The technology stands for itself… You can image brain activity with a silly looking hat instead of strapping people into a giant machine. And it’s better than the big machine in every way.
Why would you try to make it mysterious? I could explain to a child why this is cool technology in 30 seconds
Also, I don’t think this team invented the opm tech or even the headset, so they basically bought a medical device, slapped the word magic on it, and pretended like it was this cool new thing they invented
This group is just researching the effects of shooting big guns on the brain. They might spend more on bullets than they did for the hat. They’re using a cool, fairly new, toy that is already in use elsewhere… It feels like they’re just being dishonest TBH
This particular research project is working on making the hat smaller, so it’s more portable. That’s what this small team is working on specifically.
Regarding the wording they used, well yeah, you may have some interest in science, but that doesn’t mean the broader public does. If they make people like us, hanging out in a tech community, raise an eyebrow but also generate some buzz among the broader public, that’s probably a smart move on their part. The word “quantum” can do that, the way bigger words like “miniaturization” can’t.
They didn’t even say they were working on miniaturization. Instead they implied they invented a new technology, and added the word quantum before someone else’s invention and presented it as a new technology
The broader public will never care about this either way. This is so specific that it’s barely even popsci…I mean the results might be interesting, starting a study using the latest toy isn’t
The more I think about it, the more dishonest it seems
