Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Health at Tech Area. It's time for a text
Speaker 1: Stuff tidbits. And recently, my colleague Joe McCormick, who is
Speaker 1: a co host on Stuff to Blow Your Mind, is
Speaker 1: also a former writer for the Forward Thinking video series,
Speaker 1: and he was also a co host on the Accompanying
Speaker 1: Podcast with Me back in the day. He reached out
Speaker 1: to me and asked if I had ever done an
Speaker 1: episode about the Terra Hurts Gap, and I had not,
Speaker 1: and figured it would be a perfect candidate for a
Speaker 1: tech Stuff Tidbits episode. So, what the heck is the
Speaker 1: Terra Hurts Gap. What it has to do with the
Speaker 1: electromagnetic spectrum. Now, this is the distribution of all the
Speaker 1: different kinds of electro magnetic energy, from radio waves to
Speaker 1: visible light to stuff like gamma radiation. All of that
Speaker 1: is energy that falls along the electromagnetic spectrum. And we
Speaker 1: describe energy on this spectrum in a couple of different ways,
Speaker 1: really three ways. Uh. Namely, we describe it by the
Speaker 1: energy's wavelength of the individual waves of that particular energy. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's frequency, which is related to the wavelength, and also
Speaker 1: in terms of photonic energy, kind of like how much
Speaker 1: oomph this radiation has, which is also related to wavelength
Speaker 1: and frequency. So wavelength, as the name implies, describes how
Speaker 1: long that specific kind of energies waves are. So we
Speaker 1: can think of this energy as traveling in waves. If
Speaker 1: we want to get quantum with it, we can also
Speaker 1: think of it as traveling and like particles. But we're
Speaker 1: not going to get into quantum mechanics quite yet. So
Speaker 1: when we talk about wavelength, we are talking about a
Speaker 1: measurable distance. So if we were to plot out a
Speaker 1: wavelength kind of like a sine wave on graph paper,
Speaker 1: we would measure the distance from the peak of one
Speaker 1: wave to the peak of the next wave. Now, these
Speaker 1: go into an incredible range of of wavelengths. If we
Speaker 1: look at something like the extremely low frequency band of
Speaker 1: radio waves, that includes wavelengths that are up to a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand kilometers long, so a hundred thousand kilometers of wavelength.
Speaker 1: Now on the flip side of the electromagnetic spectrum, we
Speaker 1: have gamma radiation. The wavelength for a gamma wave is
Speaker 1: unimaginably tiny, like a few tenths of an angstrom, and
Speaker 1: an angstrom is one ten billionth of a meter, so
Speaker 1: we're talking about a scale that's an order smaller than
Speaker 1: a nanometer. A nanome there is one billions of a meter.
Speaker 1: So gamma waves are really really really small. Frequency on
Speaker 1: the electro magnetic spectrum, on the other hand, describes how
Speaker 1: many wave lengths of a particular type of energy passes
Speaker 1: a certain point in a given amount of time. Now,
Speaker 1: the unit we use is the hurts, and one hurts
Speaker 1: would be equivalent to a single wave length taking a
Speaker 1: full second to pass a given point. Uh. Even if
Speaker 1: we were to look at the extremely low frequency side
Speaker 1: of the spectrum, where we have those super super long
Speaker 1: wavelengths like a hundred thousand kilometer long waves, we're talking
Speaker 1: about a frequency of three hurts at this point, which
Speaker 1: would mean that three of those waves would pass any
Speaker 1: given point in a single second. Now, all of these
Speaker 1: energies are traveling at the same speed, so none of
Speaker 1: them are going faster than another radio waves at the
Speaker 1: same speed as a gamma wave. They're all moving at
Speaker 1: the speed of light. I mean light is part of
Speaker 1: the electro magnetic spectrum, so gamma rays do not move
Speaker 1: faster than radio waves. But because gamma rays are so
Speaker 1: incredibly small and radio waves are so incredibly long, a
Speaker 1: whole lot more gamma radiation is going to pass a
Speaker 1: given point in a second than radio radiation. Uh. The
Speaker 1: analogy I like to use is imagined that you have
Speaker 1: two lanes on a highway, and in the right lane
Speaker 1: is a line of buses and they're essentially traveling bumper
Speaker 1: to bumper at fifty miles per hour. In the left lane,
Speaker 1: you have a line of any any smart cars. They're
Speaker 1: also traveling bumper to bumper. They're also traveling at fifty
Speaker 1: miles per hour. And we put you at a certain
Speaker 1: point on the highway. We give you a stop watch,
Speaker 1: and we tell you to count how many buses pas
Speaker 1: buy you in a span of let's say ten seconds.
Speaker 1: So over ten seconds, you count the number of buses
Speaker 1: that pass your point. Then we have you do the
Speaker 1: same thing, but now you're counting the smart cars that
Speaker 1: pass you. Well, you're obviously going to count way more
Speaker 1: smart cars than you will busses in those ten seconds,
Speaker 1: because multiple smart cars can fit in the same physical
Speaker 1: space as a single bus. So yeah, the vehicles are
Speaker 1: all traveling at the same speed, but the size of
Speaker 1: the vehicle, which relates to the length of a wave,
Speaker 1: means that you're gonna get way more of the smaller
Speaker 1: ones than the bigger ones in the same amount of time.
Speaker 1: As for photonic energy, that also increases as wavelengths decrease
Speaker 1: and frequencies increase. So gamma radiation packs way more of
Speaker 1: an energetic punch than say, an extremely low frequency radio wave. Now,
Speaker 1: over time, we've learned how to harness many of the
Speaker 1: frequencies that are in the electromagna that ex spectrum in
Speaker 1: order to do specific kinds of stuff, And there's some
Speaker 1: messy overlaps and definitions largely depend upon the source. So
Speaker 1: while I can give you ranges for different types of
Speaker 1: electromagnetic energy and say like oh, it ranges from this
Speaker 1: wavelength to this wavelength or this frequency to this frequency. Uh,
Speaker 1: different definitions can actually have that have a different starting
Speaker 1: place in different ending place, so it gets a little difficult.
Speaker 1: For example, you could argue that radio waves range and
Speaker 1: frequency from three hurts to thirty billion hurts or thirty
Speaker 1: giga hurts, but that actually overlaps with what is broadly
Speaker 1: considered the microwave range of frequencies, which according to the
Speaker 1: most common definitions, go from one giga hurts or one
Speaker 1: billion hurts up to one hundred billion hurts or one
Speaker 1: hundred giga hurts and frequency. So there you would see
Speaker 1: there's some overlap right between one and thirty giga hurts.
Speaker 1: You would have overlap between the microwave range and the
Speaker 1: radio range. Um. By the way, we could also say
Speaker 1: that the microwave range corresponds with wavelengths that are between
Speaker 1: three millimeters to three millimeters. Remember, as the wavelength goes down,
Speaker 1: the frequency goes up, and vice versa. Now let's talk
Speaker 1: about terra hurts and the tara hurts gap. So Tara
Speaker 1: in this instance refers to trillion in the metric system.
Speaker 1: So if we go by the different prefixes that we
Speaker 1: typically use in this realm, kilo means a thousand so
Speaker 1: akilo hurts is a thousand hurts. Mega refers to one million.
Speaker 1: Mega hurts would be a million hurts. Giga is one billion,
Speaker 1: we already mentioned that, and then tara is one trillion.
Speaker 1: So an electro magnetic energy with a frequency of one
Speaker 1: tera hurts would mean you would have one trillion wavelengths
Speaker 1: of this energy pass a given spot in one second. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a section of the electromagnetic spectrum that sits between
Speaker 1: the microwave range of spectrums and where infrared begins, and
Speaker 1: it starts around point one terror hurts and frequency, or
Speaker 1: around three millimeters if we're looking at wavelength, and it
Speaker 1: goes up to around ten terror hurts or thirty micrometers
Speaker 1: in wavelength. And even that is a little fuzzy, right,
Speaker 1: Like it all depends on your point of view and
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. How we're talking about harnessing terror
Speaker 1: hurts frequencies, But it's in this little section of radiation
Speaker 1: tucked between microwaves and infrared where we haven't quite really
Speaker 1: harnessed the energy to its fullest potential. Uh So, we
Speaker 1: can use microwaves to do stuff like set up communication
Speaker 1: systems where I mean you can use them to heat
Speaker 1: up food in a microwave oven, or potentially you can
Speaker 1: use them as a means of transmitting energy to distant
Speaker 1: receptors for stuff like say space elevators. You wouldn't be
Speaker 1: generating energy this way. It would literally be you generate
Speaker 1: energy in one spot or you know, you I guess
Speaker 1: you're not technically generating, but you're harnessing energy in one spot,
Speaker 1: transmitting it over distance with microwaves, and receiving it in
Speaker 1: some distant spot. So it's basic like antenna kind of approach,
Speaker 1: but you're talking about energy, not communications. You're not modulating
Speaker 1: the signal for that purpose. We can leverage infrared to
Speaker 1: create systems that let us see and what would otherwise
Speaker 1: be darkness. You know, thermal vision works in this way
Speaker 1: where we can uh see thermal energy, which is infrared energy.
Speaker 1: Or we can use infrared to create all sorts of
Speaker 1: kinds of heating elements, and there's even like infrared lasers
Speaker 1: and things of that nature. And then, of course, later
Speaker 1: on we have the visible light spectrum, which a lot
Speaker 1: of us rely upon every single day directly, and obviously
Speaker 1: a ton of our technology is centered on generating or
Speaker 1: exploiting visible light. And then at higher frequencies we have
Speaker 1: stuff like X rays, which we've leveraged for medical imaging
Speaker 1: and more. But this little band of about point one
Speaker 1: terror hurts to ten terror hurts has proven to be
Speaker 1: a little more tricky for us to lean on. I'll
Speaker 1: explain more after we come back from this quick break.
Speaker 1: All right, let's think of it this way. This range
Speaker 1: of frequencies in the electro magnetic spectrum kind of represents
Speaker 1: a zone that exists between the world of electronics and
Speaker 1: the world of optics. Optics obviously being technology that deals
Speaker 1: with light in some way, and in the realm of tech,
Speaker 1: you can almost think of it as kind of a
Speaker 1: no man's land, at least for broad technology. It's like
Speaker 1: a dead zone. Uh, this is the terror Hurts gap.
Speaker 1: So we can rely on technology like high speed transistors
Speaker 1: and oscillating circuits to create lower frequency electromagnetic radiation. So
Speaker 1: this would be like microwaves and radio waves and that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. We can use electronics to do that.
Speaker 1: For the higher frequency stuff, we can use semiconductor lasers
Speaker 1: to produce that kind of radiation from you know, visible
Speaker 1: light all the way up to X rays. But between
Speaker 1: these two we have that dang Terra Hurts gap, and
Speaker 1: the range in the Tarro Hurts gap is one where
Speaker 1: we can't really produce those frequencies using either of those
Speaker 1: primary methods. We have to go with other methods. And
Speaker 1: I could rattle off those methods, but honestly, it would
Speaker 1: start to sound like science fiction. You know, words like
Speaker 1: quantum would be coming up, and the point being that
Speaker 1: they aren't your run of the mill approaches to creating
Speaker 1: electro magnetic radiation. It's the type of stuff you find
Speaker 1: in super high tech laboratories. However, this doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: no one has any idea regarding how we might exploit
Speaker 1: terror hurts radiation in the future. In fact, it's it's
Speaker 1: a pretty rich area of research among physicists, and it's
Speaker 1: something that astronomers and cosmologists already use in order to
Speaker 1: study the universe. So labs around the world have discovered
Speaker 1: various methodologies for generating terror hurts frequencies or for you know,
Speaker 1: detecting terror hurts radiation. But these are exceptions and so
Speaker 1: far have not evolved to a point where we could say,
Speaker 1: scale them up and mass produce them or make efficient
Speaker 1: use of them, where it would make sense to start
Speaker 1: using that technology for um, you know, broader purposes. For
Speaker 1: these very specific, narrow purposes where you're talking about laboratory research,
Speaker 1: you know, like cutting edge research. It makes sense there
Speaker 1: because you could be hitting some incredible breakthroughs that you
Speaker 1: otherwise wouldn't without the techno apology, but for practical everyday use,
Speaker 1: it doesn't yet make sense. We haven't correcked that code yet.
Speaker 1: And that's not to say there's a lack of interest there,
Speaker 1: but there are certain properties of terra Hurts frequency energies
Speaker 1: that kind of limit their applicability. So, for example, the
Speaker 1: heart's atmosphere is pretty darned good at absorbing electromagnetic radiation
Speaker 1: in that tara Hurts gap range of frequencies. So we're
Speaker 1: talking about these these forms of radiation able to travel
Speaker 1: maybe a couple dozen meters before they get absorbed by
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. So that makes this band of electromagnetic energy
Speaker 1: unsuitable for stuff like say terrestrial communication systems, because you
Speaker 1: would have to put your transmitters and your receivers so
Speaker 1: close together you might as well just start shouting out
Speaker 1: the window. Now, you could potentially create short distance networking
Speaker 1: systems that used Tara Hurts radiation to transmit data, Like
Speaker 1: if you wanted to make an indoor Wi Fi network,
Speaker 1: that's something that this technology could potentially do. Most of
Speaker 1: the devices we rely on for wireless networks have a
Speaker 1: fairly limited range already, so it's not like that would
Speaker 1: be unusual to us, and you could potentially have a
Speaker 1: terra hurts radiation based indoor Wi Fi system that was
Speaker 1: super high throughput if we found a way to generate
Speaker 1: terror hurts frequencies that was cost effective and efficient. Now,
Speaker 1: on top of that, liquid water will absorb tera hurts radiation,
Speaker 1: so there's no real application where we could use it
Speaker 1: for anything that would involve water. Uh, ditto for metals.
Speaker 1: It is highly reflected off of metals, So you could
Speaker 1: say there's some limited use cases for terror hurts radiation
Speaker 1: for things like communications. However, there are other properties that
Speaker 1: this energy has that are potentially of huge benefit, and
Speaker 1: in fact it's being used in that way in some
Speaker 1: limited cases. So, for example, these frequencies are capable of
Speaker 1: penetrating some types of matter, including body tissue, to a
Speaker 1: certain degree. That makes them kind of like X rays,
Speaker 1: But unlike X rays, Terror hurts rain radiation is non ionizing,
Speaker 1: so that means it doesn't have that photonic energy that
Speaker 1: would be required to say, strip electrons from their atoms.
Speaker 1: So X rays are an ionizing form of radiation. One
Speaker 1: of the consequences of this is that exposure to X
Speaker 1: rays can cause cellular damage. This ionizing radiation can damage
Speaker 1: cells and you can lead to serious things like like cancer. Uh.
Speaker 1: The energy and the terror Hurts gap lacks that ionizing capability,
Speaker 1: so it would be much more safe to use for
Speaker 1: medical imaging. However, because the wavelengths in this frequency band
Speaker 1: are longer the next rays. Remember, higher the frequency, the
Speaker 1: shorter the wavelength. So this is a lower frequency, longer
Speaker 1: wavelength energy and you know, it's actually even longer than
Speaker 1: visible light. Visible light is is a higher frequency than
Speaker 1: the terror Hurts gap. That means if we were to
Speaker 1: use devices that generated electromagnetic waves in this gap band
Speaker 1: for the purposes of imaging for medical purposes, we would
Speaker 1: actually end up with lower resolution pictures than we would
Speaker 1: if we were to use X rays. That the wavelengths
Speaker 1: are literally too large to give us the same resolution
Speaker 1: we would get with an X ray, So we would
Speaker 1: have to develop methods to enhance the image quality uh
Speaker 1: that the we would get from these terror Hurts technologies
Speaker 1: if in fact, we were to start using them for
Speaker 1: medical imaging. Another potential use for terror Hurts radiation is
Speaker 1: to examine non conducting materials because, like I said, it
Speaker 1: can penetrate paper, plastic, wood, ceramics, and cardboard, So water
Speaker 1: and metals are out, but this other stuff is totally in.
Speaker 1: So theoretically we could build this technology that could be
Speaker 1: used to scan for stuff like prohibited materials like weapons
Speaker 1: or you know, biologically hazardous materials, and it could even
Speaker 1: be a remote system. You could use Tara Hurts radiation
Speaker 1: to scan someone remotely. The radiation itself would be harmless,
Speaker 1: and as long as you weren't too far away where
Speaker 1: the Tara Hurts radiation would be absorbed by the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: you could scan folks safely and remotely. Astronomers have actually
Speaker 1: been using Tara Hurts frequency detection for a while now
Speaker 1: to measure stuff like the cosmic microwave background radiation that
Speaker 1: in turn is connected to the earliest moments of our universe,
Speaker 1: kind of like the moments after expansion or even during expansion.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like being able to peer back
Speaker 1: into the earliest days of the universe, um like the
Speaker 1: evolution of the universe in the in the early early
Speaker 1: times after the first instant. And we might use Terror
Speaker 1: Hurts radiation in the future to do stuff like improve
Speaker 1: manufacturing processes. You can build machines that use terra hurts
Speaker 1: scanning to look for flaws and manufactured components, for example.
Speaker 1: But in order to do all that, we first have
Speaker 1: to create technologies that can generate terror hurts radiation without
Speaker 1: relying on the super advanced tech that you'd only find
Speaker 1: sophisticated physics labs. And we're just not there yet, though
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of experimentation in the space. My
Speaker 1: guess is that the terror Hurts gap is a temporary thing.
Speaker 1: It's really just a way for us to say there's
Speaker 1: this one band of frequencies within the electromagnetic spectrum that
Speaker 1: will probably end up relying on heavily in the future
Speaker 1: for all sorts of applications. But first we have to
Speaker 1: find scalable and economic ways to create the tech that
Speaker 1: generates those frequencies. So it's really just a matter of time.
Speaker 1: But that's what the terror Hurts gap is and what
Speaker 1: that means. So if you have suggestions for future tech Stuff, tidbits, topics,
Speaker 1: really any other tech Bay topic, reach out to me
Speaker 1: on Twitter. The handle we use for the show is
Speaker 1: text Stuff h s W and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Y. Text Stuff is an I Heart
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