[HN Gopher] Laser desorption mass spectrometry - Alien detector ...
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Laser desorption mass spectrometry - Alien detector that fits in
your hand
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 55 points
Date : 2023-01-17 15:08 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| meow_cat wrote:
| Yay, my research field on Hackernews!
|
| Great achievement. The title is of course misleading: The
| Orbitrap itself (the part that "fits in your hand") was hardly
| miniaturized, it's about the same size as a regular one [0]. The
| achievement is to miniaturize "mass, volume and" (IMO
| especially!) "power requirements" of _the box around it_ (which,
| even miniaturized, does not fit in your hand). This runs at 41W
| and weighs 8kg. A commercial instrument runs at a total of ~2kW
| and weighs >100kg.
|
| (Though in space they have the convenient advantage that no extra
| vacuum system is needed, which makes up a lot of space and energy
| consumption of these instruments here on Earth. The atmosphere on
| Europa is conveniently just about the "natural" operating
| conditions of an Orbitrap, which is required for its high
| accuracy.)
|
| [0]
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orbitrap_Mass_Analyz...
| _Microft wrote:
| Here is an article on this if you can't access the paper:
|
| https://astrobiology.com/2023/01/tricorder-tech-new-small-la...
|
| An "Orbitrap" seems to be a particular form of mass spectrometer.
| The Wikipedia article also contains a cut-away image of an
| Orbitrap cell, showing the shape of the inner electrode and the
| chamber:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbitrap
| reidjs wrote:
| This reminded me of a random story from about 5 or 6 years ago.
|
| At burning man I started talking to this guy who claimed to be an
| undercover FBI agent. He told me they used mass spec to look for
| big time meth dealers. They would scrape up some dirt around
| suspected camps and run it through a mass spec to check for
| higher than average levels of the drug. Maybe he was just
| screwing with me, but he seemed sincere.
| rnk wrote:
| I'd think any homeless type camp would have all kinds of drugs
| around it in the dirt. This is as useful as when the cops used
| to take people's cash by doing checks for cocaine. Guess what,
| they pretty much always test positive for cocaine (90% in 2009,
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/cocaine-o...
| ). Also true for drug tests on people in some cases
| (https://johnhelms.attorney/police-still-using-inaccurate-
| dru...).
|
| I'd believe that some law enforcement wants to have tests that
| almost always test positive, just like drug dog checking just
| does what the handler wants, because it is convenient to get
| people arrested when they want to.
| Projectiboga wrote:
| He was talking about burning man specifically, I believe.
| [deleted]
| tuckerpo wrote:
| I used to work on person portable mass spectrometers. The biggest
| innovation hurdle is pulling vacuum in the MS manifold (for
| quadrupole mass spectrometers, at least). Nifty that they're
| given that for free in space, roughly.
| fghorow wrote:
| A tricorder with a fancier name, eh?
|
| I know some geochemists who would love a portable mass spec...
| qwezxcrty wrote:
| Well, one will still need to drag a 15 kg of turbo pump cart if
| operated on earth.
| greesil wrote:
| Space-based I think.
| weberer wrote:
| >I know some geochemists who would love a portable mass spec
|
| They sell those already. They cost around $30,000 per unit.
| detrites wrote:
| Indeed. I was surprised to learn some time ago that there are
| already several kinds of handheld, effective "tricorders" in
| existence at least as far as scanning the surface of an
| object or compound.
|
| There are two main varieties typically used by geologists
| (and also in many other fields):
|
| One is based on X-rays, which is the older, slower and more
| limited detection-range technology, that have the positive of
| being non-destructive (well, other than perhaps to the user
| depending on how they wield it...).
|
| The other, typically referred to as "LIBS", are based on
| high-intensity laser bursts that destroy a tiny portion of
| the material being analysed and then run some kind of
| analysis on the gases produced in the ignition.
|
| There are even particular models available of the latter [0]
| that have small replaceable argon gas canisters included
| which then enable the detection of every known element up to
| Uranium, though I don't know how accurate they are. They're
| also typically much faster at analysis than the X-Ray models.
|
| [0] https://sciaps.com/libs-handheld-laser-
| analyzers/z-903-libs/
| jerf wrote:
| "Tricorders" are in some sense more a spectrum than an end
| point.
|
| Even a modern phone is already simply incidentally a
| sensing platform that 50 years ago would certainly have
| been very expensive, and probably not fit into the phone
| form factor even if everything else was evicted. Just a
| full 3D accelerator, temperature sensor, pressure sensor,
| compass/magnetism sensor, and general EMF detector is an
| impressive lineup.
| qwezxcrty wrote:
| Are you talking about XRF analyzers? Those tends to be
| lighter and can be truly handheld. For LIBS systems I know,
| one need to drag a cart.
| detrites wrote:
| Follow the link I included - LIBS is now handheld (in the
| same XRF form factor, weight etc), quite a competitive
| space now, many handheld XRF manufacturers have LIBS
| versions available.
| qwezxcrty wrote:
| That looks nice! Didn't know such things exist before.
|
| However the tiny Argon bottle does not give me much
| confidence.
| detrites wrote:
| Could you elaborate? I know little about this tech, but
| suspect there may be size/performance trade-offs.
| jofer wrote:
| The portable ones used in geochemistry are usually imaging
| spectrometers, not mass-spec, unless I'm missing something.
| I.e. they're measuring something entirely different.
|
| Sure, there are portable mass spectrometers, in the sense of
| something you can put a sample in and also carry around. But
| they still require getting a sample, preparing it, and
| putting it in the machine.
|
| They're not something you can scan with.
|
| Especially in geochemistry, "scannability" / ability to
| process large sections of a core without manual sample prep
| is a big deal.
|
| You usually have hundreds of meters to kilometers of core
| (thin cylinder of rock) or a deep borehole that you're trying
| to extract information out of alongside other measurements +
| manual logging.
|
| Lots of things need destructive sampling, so you will do more
| things that actually take samples and process them, but non-
| destructive "scanning-style" methods are a huge help.
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