The tricorder

[blamski]

i assume that most people on the forum are familiar with the tricorder - the instrument from the star wars series that scans and displays read outs from just about any physical, chemical or biological subject. i'm interested in what people would do to begin to implement a biological version.

 

my imaginary scenario is that i have a 'confined' semi aquatic ecosystem such as a small pond or aquarium in which the majority of the inhabitants are microbial or protozoan. i want to grab as much data as possible from this system using a variety of sensors. off the top of my head i would use Ph sensors, gas sensors and thermometers - but i am sure there are many more that would allow me to build an image of the behaviours and processes going on within that system.

 

i'm not a scientist by the way - i'm an artist :)

[blamski]

hhhmmm.... that was a pretty weak and rushed intro post. i'd better see if i can explain myself a little better.

 

i know full well that it is impractical to build a fully functioning tricorder, despite several companies marketing multi-purpose scanners of one description or another. what i am interested in, though, is somehow tapping into the various data streams which are output by biological systems and that in some pragmatic fashion can be seen to describe the state of that system.

 

i'm guessing that the more and varied sensors one uses the more resolution the 'image' of the system would have - but i'm not sure which would be the most appropriate.

[Moontanman]

The problem here, besides that the "Tricoder" is science fantasy, is that the technology of Star Trek is based on things we cannot really access. I am familiar with aquariums and such and I if i wanted information about the inhabitants of an aquarium I really don't know of anyway to directly access that information other than buy observing it with my eyes. The environment of the aquarium could be checked by pH, conductivity, temperature, color, salinity (marine), oxygen saturation, CO2 levels, light levels, photo period. If you really had no idea of the initial conditions then some way to measure dissolved metals and organics would be important. I know of no way a single instrument could measure more than two or three of these things at best.

[REASON]

Hi blamski,

 

Just so you know, the Tricorder was a feature of the Star Trek series, not Star Wars.

 

The closest thing I can think of to what you are describing would be the landers and rovers sent to Mars to study the geology of the surface looking for evidence of liquid water and microbial life.

 

According to Wikipedia, ther are "Real" tricorders being developed that can perform some similar functions as the ones in the series, but of course, nothing like what they are capable of in the 23rd century. :)

[blamski]

ah yes, i mixed up star wars and star trek... again :)

 

i'm not trying to think of a single instrument - the tricorder was more of a metaphorical intro to the subject. i'm interested in how a collection of sensors and/or other devices could be employed to collect data that in some way described the overall state of the system, and how the behaviour/s of the organisms within that system altered its parameters.

 

reason - i like the martian lander example, i guess that could extend to the various other deep space probes as well. however, these devices are sensing physical and chemical environments whereas in this example i'm trying to think about 'organic data'.

[CraigD]

According to Wikipedia, ther are "Real" tricorders being developed that can perform some similar functions as the ones in the series, but of course, nothing like what they are capable of in the 23rd century.

A bit of coolness from the wikipedia article:

... Gene Roddenberry's contract included a clause allowing any company able to create functioning technology to use the name.

Despite a near total lack of technical knowledge, Roddenberry was, IHMO, a significant science and technology advocate, and just an all-round cool guy. ;)

i'm interested in what people would do to begin to implement a biological version.

My read on current trends in this technology is that “DNA barcoding” – techniques to sample a small segment of any plant of animal’s genome sufficient to identify it from a nearly complete database – is most likely to produce a portable “life identifier”. This 10/2008 Scientific American give a pretty good overview.

 

Unlike the apparently perfectly un-intrusive (and, as other have pointed out, fictional) STrek tricorders, real world technologies such as DNA barcode readers, and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry must destroy part of what they analyze. My personal favorite not quite near-term technology with the potential to image nearly anything down to the atomic level, while destroying only a few thousands of atoms of what is being sampled, is antimatter beam imaging. Although usually thought of as very extraordinarily destructive, very fine, sparse beams of antiparticles, in concert with detectors for the particles produced by their annihilation with normal matter, have the potential to provide very precise position and composition data, while destroying only a few atoms of it. The late Robert L. Forward described this in more detail in his 1995 book “Indistinguishable from Magic”.

[blamski]

i understand what you are saying about roddenberry - i think that a number of visionary science fiction writers have had a greater effect on the direction of science and technology than we sometimes give credit for.

 

the dna barcoding example you give is an interesting one. it reminds of metagenomics, which also interests me, however these two approaches are good for when you want to know what species you have in your sample. i'm more interested in the information, data, call it what you will, that comes out of a system - following the assumption that all systems generate data.

[GAHD]

Let's build a tricorder!

 

Let's make an array of active pixel sensors in a predetermined pattern, further we will overlay that pattern with a series of micro filters so that each pixel can only react under a given polarity and wavelength incidence. A series of refractors of various types are placed that the array may be focused over a wide range of inputs. These refractors will of course be engineered that the resultant image is properly overlapped by wavelength on the sensor array. aka it'd be a portable optical Spectrometer. Hook it up to a properly reprogrammed iphone and you've got about enough touch-sensitive display for easy function access and more power than these guys had in the palm of your hand.