Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says, Hey,
Speaker 1: what are you doing tomorrow. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren
Speaker 1: voc Obama, I'm Joe McCormick. Coundy just they just wait
Speaker 1: to see what I'm gonna say at this point today,
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk a little more about holograms. Now.
Speaker 1: We spoke about that in our last podcast, and uh,
Speaker 1: in case you did not hear that, I'll catch you
Speaker 1: up on what a hologram actually is, all right, because
Speaker 1: it's not quite the way that we perceive it from
Speaker 1: what movies tell us, right, movies and TV have told
Speaker 1: us one thing. But what what we're specifically referring to
Speaker 1: here is a method of imaging something a three dimensional
Speaker 1: object in such a way as to create the illusion
Speaker 1: of that three D object in a visual medium. But
Speaker 1: it's a physical visual medium, whether it's a screen or
Speaker 1: it's a plastic film or whatever. Essentially, what you're using
Speaker 1: as a laser beam and a beam splitter, so you
Speaker 1: split that laser beam into two beams. One of those
Speaker 1: beams you call the object beam, use mirrors to reflect
Speaker 1: that object. Beam onto an object, a three dimensional object,
Speaker 1: and that light bounces off the object and onto either
Speaker 1: holographic film or some sort of digital sensor. The second
Speaker 1: beam is called the reference beam. You essentially direct that
Speaker 1: straight to the holographic film or the sensor without it
Speaker 1: having coming into contact with the object. Now, the information
Speaker 1: that the film picks up is these two different beams
Speaker 1: of light, uh. And the and the way those those
Speaker 1: two beams interfere with one another, interact with one another,
Speaker 1: gives all the information you need to be able to
Speaker 1: create a three dimensional uh visual representation of that object,
Speaker 1: assuming that you are able to use the same sort
Speaker 1: of light that was used to create that object. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then if you were to hold like a film up,
Speaker 1: a holographic holographic film and that's got a hologram on it,
Speaker 1: it would look like there is a physical object just
Speaker 1: on the other side of film. UM. And so that's
Speaker 1: that's your basis of holography. That's it. That's essentially how
Speaker 1: it works. UM. So it's a little different from our
Speaker 1: two D two rolling up and beaming out Princess Leiah,
Speaker 1: but uh, we mostly talked about in the last episode
Speaker 1: about using holograms or three D visualization effects for entertainment purposes.
Speaker 1: But that's not the only use of them, is it. Well,
Speaker 1: you know that that's the way we mostly encounter three D, right,
Speaker 1: it's going to a three D movie or or looking
Speaker 1: at a three D hologram photo, you know, something that's
Speaker 1: for entertainment or art or aesthetic value. But yeah, it
Speaker 1: turns out that they're actually good scientific uses for holograms,
Speaker 1: and some that can potentially even save lives. Sure. Well,
Speaker 1: Um and Joe, you were telling me about one about
Speaker 1: using holograms uh for uh in that life saving technique
Speaker 1: us with firefighters, right, So so think about this, Um,
Speaker 1: imagine you're a firefighter and you are you know, you're
Speaker 1: responding to a house call. You arrive at a large
Speaker 1: house that um is engulfed in flames, right, and you
Speaker 1: go inside. But immediately you have you have a problem.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of us probably haven't even
Speaker 1: thought about this. How do you know where people are? Right?
Speaker 1: If you have smoke and flames that are obscuring your vision,
Speaker 1: how can you see someone on the other side of
Speaker 1: it shouting very clearly? Then? Well, but even then it
Speaker 1: might be extremely and you might not be able to hear.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so so imagine you're in a big room
Speaker 1: and there might be a wall of flame between you
Speaker 1: and or in a doorway whatever, you can't see beyond it. Um.
Speaker 1: And so this causes a lot of problems obviously, before
Speaker 1: responding to fire calls, do you risk your life going
Speaker 1: into a room that may not have anyone on the
Speaker 1: other side when uh, you know, if if there's no
Speaker 1: one there, then it would be tragic if a firefighter
Speaker 1: were to be injured or killed going in there to
Speaker 1: see if someone was there. Yeah. And I was just
Speaker 1: looking at the study. I mean they say that in
Speaker 1: the United States there are three thousand deaths every year
Speaker 1: in house fires. Yeah, so this is a big problem obviously. Um.
Speaker 1: But the study I read was um from some Italian researchers,
Speaker 1: and they figured out something interesting. Okay, so previously we
Speaker 1: had some technological ways of getting through the obfuscation created
Speaker 1: by smoking fire. We had infrared bolometry b O, L O, M, E,
Speaker 1: T E R bolometer UM and and that that scans
Speaker 1: in the infrared spectrum, and so this was really helpful
Speaker 1: in seeing through smoke. Right, But then if you're looking
Speaker 1: at flames infrared and heat, I mean you're talking about
Speaker 1: just seeing a big bright image exactly. The radiation from
Speaker 1: the flames themselves would disrupt the I R spectrum and
Speaker 1: you couldn't see You could see through smoke with with
Speaker 1: the bolometers, but you couldn't see through flames. UM. And
Speaker 1: so what these Italian researchers figured out is that um
Speaker 1: by using holograms based on a continuous wave of laser
Speaker 1: digital holograms, they could actually sample through flames and they
Speaker 1: would be able to detect with these lasers holographic image
Speaker 1: of what was beyond. And this was on a scale
Speaker 1: of the correct size to detect human movement and pick
Speaker 1: up the figures of a human shape. Pretty cool. So,
Speaker 1: just by using this laser and some holographic imaging, you
Speaker 1: were able to, uh to do something that otherwise would
Speaker 1: have been difficult or possibly even impossible to do. It's
Speaker 1: a really neat implementation. I've got one, uh it's very science,
Speaker 1: which is using holograms to to image cells, uh, living
Speaker 1: cells C E L L S. So one of the
Speaker 1: problems with looking at cells if you're using a light microscope, right,
Speaker 1: cells cells don't aren't necessarily so small that light microscopes
Speaker 1: are useless. We can use light microscopes to look at
Speaker 1: objects on that that size that scale. Well, what kind
Speaker 1: of light microscope to be you're talking about an optical microscope,
Speaker 1: like you look through a lens and yeah, that kind
Speaker 1: of like that's what I mean by light microscope, not
Speaker 1: like a scanning microscope and nothing like that. You're just
Speaker 1: using light and and lenses to be able to get
Speaker 1: a look at something that's bright field exactly. So the
Speaker 1: problem with that is that, first of all, you're getting
Speaker 1: kind of a two dimensional look at a cell and
Speaker 1: you know, squished between you know, some some glass plates
Speaker 1: and uh so you're not really getting a true look
Speaker 1: at what that cell really looks like. You're you're getting
Speaker 1: this top down, two dimensional view of it. Another problem
Speaker 1: is that often in order to get a good look
Speaker 1: at the stuff that's inside a cell, you usually need
Speaker 1: to use some sort of dye or fluorescent material to
Speaker 1: highlight parts of that cell. I imagine that's not good
Speaker 1: for the cell. Uh well, yeah, you're pretty much not
Speaker 1: gonna be able to look at living cells this way.
Speaker 1: At least they're not gonna be living for very long.
Speaker 1: And also, uh, it means that you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: still not a true representation of what the cell looks like.
Speaker 1: You're you're altering the look of the cell, and you
Speaker 1: have to in order to be able to get a
Speaker 1: look at these things. Uh So, one way that some
Speaker 1: scientists have looked at at imaging cells that would give
Speaker 1: you a more realistic look at what a cell appears
Speaker 1: to be and also be able to look at living
Speaker 1: cells in more or less real time. Right now, it's
Speaker 1: not quite real time. It's there's a delay, but um
Speaker 1: is using a hologram. You actually use a split laser beam.
Speaker 1: Just like I was saying before. You have that reference
Speaker 1: beam and the object beam. The object beam in this
Speaker 1: case is making contact with cells. And uh, then you
Speaker 1: record the pattern of face shifts from the object beam
Speaker 1: and you record the information using a digital camera. You
Speaker 1: recombine the beams. Then you get that interference pattern from
Speaker 1: the two beams, and you analyze that using a computer
Speaker 1: with special software that then we'll build a three D
Speaker 1: image based upon all of that information. So yeah, the
Speaker 1: computer is doing all the work for you. Once you've
Speaker 1: designed the software, I mean, you can build the software first.
Speaker 1: This incredibly complex program that yeah, but you don't have
Speaker 1: to rewrite it every time, so so yeah, then you
Speaker 1: can process the data using that software, build the three
Speaker 1: D model of the cell. You can even take slices
Speaker 1: digital slices of the cell and take a look at it.
Speaker 1: So you can take cross sections of a cell. Very useful,
Speaker 1: and you don't have to use the dyes or fluorescence
Speaker 1: to be able to get a look at the inside
Speaker 1: of it. Uh. Now, there was a team at a
Speaker 1: polytechnical university in Switzerland ep f L, which is a
Speaker 1: pardon my French call Polytechnique Federal de Lozanne. It's a
Speaker 1: terrible fringe French. Yeah, my high school French, which was
Speaker 1: many many years ago, has mostly faded from memory, so
Speaker 1: I do apologize. But the the technique does give the
Speaker 1: ability to observe cellular behavior in real time, and you
Speaker 1: can even see how living cells react to different types
Speaker 1: of stimuli. But this could be really useful in medicine
Speaker 1: because you could actually apply a tiny cellular dose of
Speaker 1: medicine to living cells and observe the reaction. So that
Speaker 1: way you know before you've ever gone to test on
Speaker 1: any sort of large organism exactly, not not even a human.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you're just looking. You can look at just
Speaker 1: the cells and if the cells immediately die off, you think,
Speaker 1: all right next, unless it's you know, something like a
Speaker 1: cancer cell, in which case, if the cancer cells dies
Speaker 1: off in the healthy cell doesn't, then you're thinking we
Speaker 1: might be onto something. Yeah. So um, so they actually
Speaker 1: showed uh in a paper, they demonstrated the growth of
Speaker 1: a neuron and what they did was they took a
Speaker 1: holographic image of a neuron cell every minute for an
Speaker 1: hour as it was growing, and then they played back
Speaker 1: that sequence of images. So you've got the animation of
Speaker 1: a neuron cell growing in three dimensions. Flipbook there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And of course the really important part here is using
Speaker 1: a very low intensity laser because lasers do generate heat,
Speaker 1: and of course if you generate too much heat, you
Speaker 1: would damage the scales, right, So that is an important
Speaker 1: part of this is that they have to use a
Speaker 1: specific kind of low intensity laser and not one of
Speaker 1: those high beams that you might use on you know,
Speaker 1: inanimate objects. I think that's amazing that they can they
Speaker 1: can sample holography on a scale that's small. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have thought so well, you know, they they're using lasers
Speaker 1: that have a precision of a nanometers. That's really tiny.
Speaker 1: It is. Holograms are incredibly precise. They're they're they're very
Speaker 1: high definition, right right, Yeah, they they are taking incredibly
Speaker 1: tiny measurements based upon the acts of photons. So, I
Speaker 1: mean that's pretty tiny. So you can get pretty precise. Now, great,
Speaker 1: if you you can't get too much further down the nanoscale,
Speaker 1: because eventually your nanoscale you're going to go beyond the
Speaker 1: range of visual the visual spectra acuity here, you're going
Speaker 1: to run out of photo sensitive space. Yeah, you would.
Speaker 1: Essentially you could switch to other parts of the electromagnetic
Speaker 1: spectrum and sample it that way. If you were able
Speaker 1: to find a way to to digitally interpret that information
Speaker 1: into a means that would create it a visual representation
Speaker 1: for us, then that would work. But you know, you
Speaker 1: can only go so far with visual with actual light
Speaker 1: light that's visible to us, you know, using something like
Speaker 1: an infrared laser as opposed to a red or green
Speaker 1: or laser. So yeah, it's it's usually red lasers I
Speaker 1: think in the in the creation of these non scientific
Speaker 1: entertainment holograms. But but anyway that that precision actually ties
Speaker 1: into one thing that I was reading about, which is
Speaker 1: holography of being used in conjunction with something called optogenetics. UM.
Speaker 1: This is research being done at the technog Israel Institute
Speaker 1: of Technology and UH. Optogenetics is UM. It's a therapy
Speaker 1: that's used to UM to deliver light sensitive proteins to eyes,
Speaker 1: to to retin as specifically that have been damaged, usually
Speaker 1: by some kind of disease that leads to degeneration. Like
Speaker 1: UM writtenments that one right there. Even I even even
Speaker 1: syllablized it out for myself, and I was just like, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I have no idea, I can't read. It's no, these
Speaker 1: are not English words. That does that does sound like
Speaker 1: something in Harry Potter is pigmentosa anyway, UM so so yeah,
Speaker 1: so so damaged damaged nerve cells is the output of
Speaker 1: this disease and it can eventually lead to blindness. UM
Speaker 1: and optogenetics takes takes these proteins from algae or bacteria,
Speaker 1: and UM allows a cell that it's inserted into to
Speaker 1: begin to be photosensitive again. So it's gene therapy. It's
Speaker 1: gene therapy right so so right now we haven't even
Speaker 1: gotten into the hologram part, right, right, Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: this is just putting in pitting in proteins that give
Speaker 1: some photosensitivity back to cells that otherwise have been losing
Speaker 1: that exactly. Yeah. And and and this is an incredibly
Speaker 1: cool therapy. Um. The the only problem with it is
Speaker 1: that these newly photo sensitive cells um aren't quite working
Speaker 1: at the same optimal levels that they would have been originally,
Speaker 1: and so researchers are are still looking into the best
Speaker 1: way to deliver light patterns to these cells so that
Speaker 1: they can so that they can interpret the signals as
Speaker 1: naturally as possible. Right, So essentially you're talking about kind
Speaker 1: of activating these cells through pulses of light exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And uh, the what's key they've found is is um intensity, precision,
Speaker 1: and diffusion of the stimuli. And that's a tough combo
Speaker 1: to get. That's a really tough combo to get. But
Speaker 1: it's also exactly what a hologram is, right, Because a
Speaker 1: laser on its own is very precise, but the other
Speaker 1: it won't fulfill the other criteria. Right. It's very precise
Speaker 1: and it's very intense, but when you've output it into
Speaker 1: holographic format, it's also very diffused. Right. So that's that's
Speaker 1: the combination of things that make it ideal for this
Speaker 1: kind of therapy, all right. And so so what they're
Speaker 1: looking at is creating um prosthetic or or goggles or
Speaker 1: something like that that will uh interpret data, you know,
Speaker 1: interpret visual data and project it as a hologram onto
Speaker 1: onto the surface for people to see and and then
Speaker 1: let your cells do the rest of the work. Interesting. Wow,
Speaker 1: So so you what you're saying is you'd have a
Speaker 1: pair of glasses that we're showing you holographic images, okay,
Speaker 1: and that yeah, that that are that are optimized for
Speaker 1: your new cells to interpret that information. That's really cool, yea. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it turns out there's quite a few uses
Speaker 1: for holograms beyond uh, you know, some protection on a
Speaker 1: credit card or or currency or UA tupac. You know
Speaker 1: that's not a hologram. I also think we shouldn't necessarily
Speaker 1: play down the purely esthetic benefits of three D imagery. Sure, um,
Speaker 1: because also when you think about it, uh, imagine Star
Speaker 1: Trek or or any other very easy for me to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just imagine it just trek and the words will come.
Speaker 1: But no, I think about so they've got like a holidack, right,
Speaker 1: the next generation forward? Yes, right, right, Okay, they've got
Speaker 1: a room they can go into that reliably creates what
Speaker 1: can we Yeah, yeah, I would say ir reliably. Sorry,
Speaker 1: that creates a convincing three D effects to people, And
Speaker 1: I can actually see why this would be a more
Speaker 1: than trivial goal. Sure, if you're exploring space, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're we're children of this planet Earth, and uh, we're
Speaker 1: very very accustomed to our environments. You know, seeing trees
Speaker 1: and thinking the blue sky makes us feel good, going
Speaker 1: to the ocean. Yeah, I can't imagine that it would
Speaker 1: be good for your psychological state to be trapped in
Speaker 1: a metal or you know, fully synthetic spaceship all the time.
Speaker 1: All right, well, don't don't. Don't They have studies about
Speaker 1: how long people are allowed to be on submarines before
Speaker 1: they will, in fact go stare crazy and try to
Speaker 1: kill everybody. I think it varies from person to person.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's like, you know, he's got two
Speaker 1: days to go. I don't think that's the case. But
Speaker 1: it's a little bit what you thought. That's what she
Speaker 1: was suggesting, Like, no, but I was interpreting it the
Speaker 1: way I would want to know. There are there are
Speaker 1: certainly studies that go into this. I mean that was
Speaker 1: the whole point of the the project, where people were
Speaker 1: supposed to be sequestered from all of society for like
Speaker 1: six months or something in order to kind of simulate
Speaker 1: the conditions that would happen if if you were to
Speaker 1: create a Mars colony, for example, so that you would
Speaker 1: be able to see how long can someone go without that?
Speaker 1: And of course we don't have the benefit of something
Speaker 1: like a Holio deck to recreate these scenes, so psychologically
Speaker 1: it's going to be very demanding upon anyone who takes
Speaker 1: upon that sort of endeavor to to you know, especially
Speaker 1: talking about going to Mars. I mean, most most of
Speaker 1: the projections I see right now are talking about that
Speaker 1: being a one way trip. So you go, you set
Speaker 1: up shop, and that's where you are for the rest
Speaker 1: of your life. Well, I mean, you can imagine for
Speaker 1: a lot of people, it's not that they don't want
Speaker 1: to see Mars, I mean, going to Mars would be amazing,
Speaker 1: is that they don't want to leave Earth, right or
Speaker 1: they don't want to see Mars all the time. Ever,
Speaker 1: and depending upon how how well that that place is
Speaker 1: made forever maybe very short. Well, yeah, it's just that
Speaker 1: it's not the addition of Mars that makes it a
Speaker 1: scary short opposition. It's the subtraction of Earth, yes exactly.
Speaker 1: But but a Holi deck would at least psychologically give
Speaker 1: you some sort of release from that or even in
Speaker 1: training purposes, going back to medicine, if a if a
Speaker 1: doctor in training could have a fully holographic haptic hologram
Speaker 1: that you could interact with, all right, So that way,
Speaker 1: when when your hand would seem to come into contact
Speaker 1: with whatever it is, you would get the feedback from
Speaker 1: some sort of device so that you would have a
Speaker 1: a from your sense of touch, you would have that
Speaker 1: same sort of feedback as you're getting from your sense
Speaker 1: of sight. Right, And they're they're starting work on that.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of researchers that are working on that
Speaker 1: problem precisely. Um. You know, also in in a in
Speaker 1: a smaller scale, if you go to Disney World, the
Speaker 1: new Hitchhiking ghosts at the end of the Mansion ride
Speaker 1: involve a little bit of interactive three D imaging that
Speaker 1: is tracking like a connect with track your your motion.
Speaker 1: The motion of the guests in the cars and having
Speaker 1: the animations interact with you that way. Right, Yeah, I'd
Speaker 1: have to imagine that kind of thing would really be
Speaker 1: almost required if you were going to have good tell asurgery, right,
Speaker 1: And people have talked about telesurgery, and there's there's telesurgery now, right,
Speaker 1: But to really get the kind of control that the
Speaker 1: surgeon needs, I mean, it would seem like you you'd
Speaker 1: have to have some kind of simulation of three D. Usually, yeah,
Speaker 1: Usually there's a some sort of simulation of three D
Speaker 1: as well as a device that the surgeon holds that
Speaker 1: gives some haptic feedback. Often there's also a a ratio
Speaker 1: for how far the surgeon moves versus how far the
Speaker 1: robotic arm that actually is holding the the surgical tools,
Speaker 1: how far it moves, So you can do some very precise,
Speaker 1: very delicate surgery hundreds of miles away from the you know,
Speaker 1: the surgeons one place and the patient somewhere else. You
Speaker 1: can actually do very delicate surgery that way. But it
Speaker 1: is important to build these systems in place, both for
Speaker 1: the imaging aspects so that the surgeon is is doing
Speaker 1: exactly what needs to be done and the whole feedback loop,
Speaker 1: so that you know, everything is uh, it's not just
Speaker 1: the visual cues that the surgeon is working off of.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm sure we'll see holograms worked into other
Speaker 1: aspects of things that are useful and things that are entertaining.
Speaker 1: Not that entertaining doesn't have its own use, but I'm
Speaker 1: really excited about where the future is in this and
Speaker 1: uh and speaking of the future like we have been.
Speaker 1: If you guys out there have any suggestions for topics
Speaker 1: that we should cover in Forward Thinking, please get in
Speaker 1: touch with us. Send us an email our addresses f
Speaker 1: W Thinking at discovery dot com, or go to f
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