Build a Better Magnet
September 24, 2004
The University of Illinois at Chicago unveiled a new, more powerful MRI machine earlier this week. Today’s standard MRI machines are rated at 1.5 tesla, with the new one clocking in at an astounding 9.4 tesla, more than 100,000 times as powerful as the magnetic field of the Earth.
At their measly 1.5 tesla, modern clinical MRI machines can only image water molecules, which means that only anatomical changes can be measured. The new machines can detect signals from sodium, phosphorus, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, allowing doctors and researchers to measure the physical components of thought. The physical affects of just about any stimulus, from drugs to injuries to dreams, can now be measured and examined down to the most miniscule of levels.
This is terribly exciting news.
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Posted at 3:37 pm.
/me imagines that Magneto used magnetic forces about 100,000 times as powerful as the magnetic field of the Earth when he (to dazzling effect) extracted the iron from the guard’s bloodstream in X-Men 2.
:)
I get the same image. It makes me want to stop taking my multivitamin with iron before getting one of these new-fangled MRIs.