Compact holographic sound fields enable rapid one-step assembly of matter in 3D

[shadowgovt]

This is one of those cool ideas that is much easier to grasp with some animated visuals. I haven't found one for this specific application, but adjacent work in using sound to move small objects is seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpNbyfxxkWE , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MXVSdXZzpc , and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzWP-NL3Lck

Controlling the motion involves a lot of prediction and wave modeling, which should be a perfect application for high-performance computing.

[knightofmars]

Wow!

https://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/presentations/...

[rsingla]

In the Supplementary Materials, there's a set of example videos of this work in action. In particular, the helix shape is pretty cool to see form in (essentially) the blink of an eye.

[nomel]

Here's a kit you can buy, for a single point version: https://a.co/d/bZVnuOS

[achalkley]

Reminds me of Kryptonian tech in Man of Steel

[ge96]

drop it down to mems mirror like dmd

[calebio]

This kinda reminds me of Terence McKenna talking about his experience with DMT.

He met "self-replicating machine elves". One of them told him, "don't be stuck in shock/wonder", and "do what we're doing".

Then he noticed that these 'beings' were creating various 'physical' objects in front of him with sound. Like they were "singing" these objects into existence. He called it, "glossolalia", or "speaking in tongues".

Through his DMT trips he apparently learned to use different sounds to create objects in front of him. Slight changes in the sound changed the appearance of the object.

Not that I necessarily believe him, but it peaks my imagination in fun ways.

[IIAOPSW]

If you ever do psychedelics, try out a tone generator while on the trip. https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/

In particular the 20-100 hz range.

There's a simple explanation for all of this. The sound wave frequencies are about coincident with the brain wave frequencies used in representing conscious thought. Signals of audio and visual perception in the brain are meant to be similar, you want to recognize the same object as the cause of both light and sound signals. So perhaps information in the optical nerve is serialized in a manner that makes the wave form similar to sound waves coming from the same direction and same characteristic length scale. Of course on psychedelics you can use sound or perhaps even blinking lights to create erroneous perceptions.

[RangerScience]

There was an art piece (at Burning Man, where else haha) that replicated this to some degree - simply a chill couch/bed thing that'd comfortably fit about five, with headset microphones and a projector, which'd visualize the sound.

And... however they put it together, it was magic. You really did feel like you were singing shapes into existence with your friends.

[dekhn]

Many people see DMT elves. You can hear some of McKenna's quotes in Shpongle's songs ("A New Way to Say Hoo-ray".

And of course, in the Silmarillion, Eru Iluvatar "sings" the universe into form and creates deities that form harmonies (and then, dissonance).

[akomtu]

I've seen a similar explanation of the nature of thoughts: "the world of thoughts is the world of sound, each thought appears as a hollow shape emitting a unique sound, which appears to support that shape". In modern teems, that's very similar to a radiospace filled with signals and noise, each signal encoding a shape, everyone has a transmitter and a receiver that uses some well known method to translate shapes to signals. It helps that the signals space has infinitely many dimensions.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

piques

[motohagiography]

Would this also work by using the accoustic field on the material that instead of air, was suspended in a liquid? It seems like it's using the relative densities of the materials anyway, so whether it's sound through air or another medium seems equivalent.

[fermuch]

Figure 6 shows the method with gel particles. If I'm interpreting it right, it's suspended on a liquid (I most likely am wrong).

[javiramos]

Can someone summarize the advance relative to the prior art? There is quite a bit of previous work in this space including PixieDust (siggraph 2014) [0].

[0] https://youtu.be/NLgD3EtxwdY

[ororroro]

The use of ultrasound holograms rather than an array of transducers. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature19755

[nbpname]

Interesting!

The current design seems to uses 3 transducers at 2.25 MHz with a static phase shifter added on top of the transducers. Then they capture floating / dropping particles which are moving past the design that they want to be printing.

I am currently working on building a similar mechanism as a pet project, inspired by the SonicSurface[1], with the goal of having a dynamic hologram while not requiring a huge computer hidden in the back.

[1] https://www.instructables.com/SonicSurface-Phased-array-for-...

[tanepiper]

Cool, Sonic Screwdrivers

[rdevsrex]

One more step on the road to programmable matter.

[polishdude20]

I can imagine this being used with some form of acoustically hardening resin. Put it in a container where the walls are ultrasonic transducers and then make the wave interact in such a way as to create acoustic hotspots that harden the material

[space_fountain]

I've thought this would be cool to with radio heating. The wavelengths are smaller so you should be able to get better accuracy

[zan2434]

I don't think that's even necessary! You could use this acoustic technique to shape ordinary light-curing resin and then flash with UV light to harden it.

[loa_in_]

This combined with zero gravity seems most promising

[p1esk]

What do you mean? For VR?

[dr_dshiv]

This is cymatics!

[julius]

So they are using sound waves to form very exact force-fields in 3D. But when you throw matter in there, would that not interact and reflect all the waves in unpredictable ways, destroying the very exact force-field pattern they are trying to achieve?

[DennisP]

Did everybody skip over the part about it working with biological cells? This seems like a big step towards printing organs.

[triptych]

One step closer to transporter technology

[sdesalas]

One step closer to hologram technology... "Help me Obi-wan you're our only hope."

[shkolarac]

And now just do it with microwave and you have instant 3d printer :)

[midjji]

This is a very cool idea, I hope it scales

[jakedub4d2]

All this math. Thank God for science.

[haupt]

Nobody tell Ted Faro.

[inanutshellus]

Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

[cwkoss]

It occurred to me last week that phrase is prompt engineering. He is giving the essential info to specify what he wants presumably because a shorter specification would yield a different result.

I wonder if star trek replicators are deterministic.

Does Picards frequent ordering of Tea Early Grey Hot make the probability of someone ordering "tea" more likely to be TEGH, and thus if Picard ordered TEGH frequently enough he would eventually be able to just say "tea"? Do replicators do continuous training or is the prompt inference engine static?

[Roverlord]

"I'm sorry, but I am an AI language model and do not have the ability to make or serve tea. Is there anything else I can assist you with?"

But since it gives different results for different people, has anyone actually received a cup of tea?

[mkaic]

Obligatory https://xkcd.com/2570/

[midoridensha]

Earl Grey tea on command would be nice, but Quark's holosuites would be much better.

[AceJohnny2]

Well I just found the name of my new sci-fi technology.