Science, Science and Society, Technology

All kinds of trippy goodness - food as scanned by MRI

Hah!  Still alive!  (Possibly)

mri fruit
A melon

A little bit of very intriguing strangeness today.  And yes, a brief post too.  Still, the amount of time spent watching this in fascination should hopefully make up for that.

Some very interesting person took a bunch of different foods, and bunged them into an MRI scanner.  For the fun of it.  And to see what would happen.  And it’s mad!  And quite strange.  And very beautiful.  And it moooooves.  Hypnotically so.

What’s an MRI scanner?  Well,  commonly used in hospitals, it’s basically a giant magnet into which people (or, y’know, fruit) are placed.  It’s a pretty new technology (from the 70s), and works by using very powerful magnetic fields to realign the hydrogen atoms in the water contained by your body.  Which means it can take very detailed pictures of your inner workings, layer by layer. And can generate 3D images, too.

It’s not always used medically, though.  The same tech gets used (albeit under a slightly different name) in other fields of enquiry too. And, brilliantly, it’s a prime candidate for high temperature superconductor use.  Which is a win for New Zealand, given that we’re very involved in HTS tech*.  More on that another time, though.

Enjoy the show!  My favourite’s the artichoke…

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* If you find HTS stuff fascinating, read this!  A previous post on their use (as proof of concept) in vehicles.  Land vehicles.  With all wheels and things.

  • guyw

    My favourite’s the broccoli - makes me think of the universe: big bang, then clusters, distinct galaxies and finally all collapsing inwards… :-)

  • Aimee Whitcroft

    Oooh, good point! It also reminded me a lot of changing fractals, and was certainly one of the more favouritest ones…

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