[bloggie]

As someone who works with THz I can assure you that nobody has thought of environmental factors as these technologies are far from being implemented in any consumer or industrial device - as stated in the article, this is fundamental science. If you go to the THz conference or PW all you will get is academic papers. The applications are certainly very interesting given the nearly unlimited bandwidth available in the THz regime and the fact that it's unlicensed, but we are far away from any kind of real implementation despite decades of articles like these.

[adastra22]

What are some of the things THz would be good for?

[bloggie]

Actual applications at the moment are mostly imaging, the 'nudie scanners' at airports and THz imaging at various frequencies is in use for food inspection as it can easily show blemishes/defects in produce that would otherwise be invisible. I read a paper once on detecting counterfeit money. Analysis of airborne contaminants / weather prediction are other possible applications. For telecom it has been considered (at very early stages) for 6G due to the huge bandwidth available. Really there are a lot of 'possible' applications but implementing them has proven difficult either because it requires advancements in materials or other risky aspects or because it's beaten by existing technologies at the moment.