At the Exploratorium in San Francisco several years ago, they had a neato display. Imagine three coils of copper tubing. The one on the left was somewhat hot - you could hold your hand on it, and it would be uncomfortable, but not really painful.
The one on the left was cold - again, uncomfortable but not painful.
The one in the middle alternated between that same hot, and that same cold, a couple of times per second. Put your hand on it, and for a short instant you could feel the alternating temps, but then: OWWWEEE! It felt like you had just placed your hand on a hot frying pan, and no one in our group was able to leave his hand on it for more than one second.
Now that’s a torture device, and no 94 GHz advanced technology required.
Yeah, but pulses of this ray shouldn’t leave any evidence. And if it creates such an uncomfortable experience, it sounds like the dream of every torturer. A way to inflict pain without ill effects and without leaving any marks.
I don’t understand this mindset with regards to this device.
What is it about this device that bothers you? Is it because it could potentially be used to torture and the victim would have no physical evidence to show for it?
How about dripping water on a forehead?
Any device that can make belligerents drop weapons without harming them sounds like a Godsend.
That hot/cold water trick works because of the way our temperature sensor nerves work. We have cold sensors and warm sensors. Cold sensors are stimulated by cold, warmth sensors are stimulated by warmth. But we don’t have “hot” sensors. What happens is that cold sensors are stimulated not just by cold but also by extreme heat. So the combination of cold sensors and warmth sensors going off together is interpreted by your brain as “hot”.
And this is why extreme heat and cold are often misinterpreted by the brain…an ice cube can sometimes feel hot, or a foot in a hot bath sometimes feels cold.
Yeah, Lemur, they had that explanation at the Exploratorium too (after all, it is a science exhibit). But I just can’t summon the words to communicate what a powerful effect it was - it no-kidding felt like my hand was sitting on a hot frying pan. And no tissue damage at all!
When I first read about the ADS ray, and saw that it’s 94 GHz, I figured that it must work by stimulating the nerves, and not actually heating up tissue, because a) it works from hundreds of yards away, and b) it’s really hard to generate any significant power at those frequencies. I’ve worked a little in that range, and microwatts is typical for what I’ve seen. I have no idea how they generate that much power at that frequency. Is it a phased array? The pics look like a single emitter feeding a dish reflector.
What a stupid argument. A violent mob is threatening civil order. The police have several choices: Real bullets, rubber bullets, tasers, or ADS. Which is the best choice?
Well, yes, but so can tanks, or machine guns, or chemical weapons. This would be a way to break up a protest without killing a bunch of people, which makes it an improvement over the old ways of breaking up protests. Of course, generally speaking, breaking up peaceful protests is a bad thing, but that’s a political problem, not a technological problem. Banning or suppressing this technology won’t prevent oppressive governments from breaking up protests, it’ll just mean they have to use more lethal methods to do it.
Yes, but so what? As has been pointed out, there are lots of ways to use heat to torture someone that doesn’t require expensive Star Trek technology. The torture concern with this device is that it doesn’t leave any marks, but that’s only under situations where the victim can get out of the beam quickly. Belting someone down and holding the beam on them for long periods would leave obvious signs of torture, and if you’re talking about a regime that doesn’t care about leaving obvious signs of torture, a hot poker would be a much more effective torture implement than this ray gun.
Thank you. I am not talking about 20 minivan-driving moms with “save the whales” placards. I am talking about masked rioters throwing molotovs at the police.
You need to dial up your evil-o-meter. Think of a padded room with an unrestrained victim where you pulse him for a couple secs, again and again, for days. No marks, all pain.
Sapo, I am sure that this device could be used in cruel ways, but as others have pointed out, there are myriad ways that a sufficiently sadistic and creative person could come up with, using low-tech stuff. And most of those are much less expensive and much more available than the agony-ray.
Being usable as a torture device in itself isn’t much of an argument against it.
I’m unconvinced that you could operate this on someone for a prolonged period of time and have it not leave marks. It’s meant to be used in situations where people are going to want to get out of the way fast.
Only one way to know! I wonder where could we find a country with 75 million volunteers that we don’t particularly like?
(And FTR, I am all for this ADS as a useful tool for crowd control, as I have said since my first post in this thread. That it can be misused is a regrettable side effect that is in no way exclusive to this new technology)
