Page 51 - BBC Focus - August 2017
P. 51
Majorana
particles
What are they?
As yet undiscovered
particles that act as their
own antiparticles. They are
named after Ettore
Majorana, the Italian AUGMENTED
physicist who proposed
CRIME
them in 1937.
Tell me more! SCENES
When most particles
confront their antiparticles
– particles with the same Being the first police officer to
mass but opposite charge arrive at a crime scene is a stressful
– they annihilate each business. Are the culprits still here?
other and emit energy. It is Is it safe for me to walk around?
theorised that Majorana Does anyone need medical help? In
particles do not do this. these circumstances, it’s easy for
what might later turn out to be a
Are we any closer to vital piece of evidence to be
finding them? ‘polluted’ in some way – trodden
University of Surrey on, knocked over, or mishandled.
researchers have created a But soon, officers arriving at such
method of potentially scenes may have the finest minds
detecting them, by using in crime scene investigation to
photons and supercon- guide their every move, even if
ducting circuits to find they’re working at the other end of
Majorana particles’ the city.
signatures. The idea is to use augmented
reality, where a view of the real
So what can they be world is ‘augmented’ in some way
used for? with digital data. Researchers at
Researchers believe the Delft University of Technology in
particles could be of use in the Netherlands have been
the production of working with Dutch police, the
functioning q-bits, the Netherlands Forensic Institute and
building blocks [120 words] the Dutch Fire Brigade to develop a
system in which crime scenes get
overlaid with information from a
CSI expert so early arrivers know
what to bag up as evidence or
investigate further.
In one recent trial of the
technology, officers were faced
with a mock ecstasy lab in the
kitchen of an apartment.
A smartphone mounted on an
officer’s shoulder beamed live
video to a crime scene investigator
who then annotated what they
could see, highlighting the
chemicals and equipment that
would need to be removed for
“SCENES GET OVERLAID WITH INFORMATION analysis. The officers on the
ground viewed the scene and
FROM A CSI EXPERT SO EARLY ARRIVERS annotations through a second
smartphone they were holding,
KNOW WHAT TO BAG UP AS EVIDENCE” and, in another test, the
smartphones were replaced with
augmented reality headsets.
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