Laser desorption mass spectrometry – Alien detector that fits in your hand

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-022-01866-x

by Brajeshwar • 4 years ago

65 20 4 years ago

nature.com

fghorow• 4 years ago

A tricorder with a fancier name, eh?

I know some geochemists who would love a portable mass spec...

greesil• 4 years ago

Space-based I think.

weberer• 4 years ago

I know some geochemists who would love a portable mass spec

They sell those already. They cost around $30,000 per unit.

jofer• 4 years ago

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.

detrites3• 4 years ago

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/

qwezxcrty4• 4 years ago

Well, one will still need to drag a 15 kg of turbo pump cart if operated on earth.

_Microft• 4 years ago

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

meow_cat• 4 years ago

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...

reidjs• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

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• 4 years ago

He was talking about burning man specifically, I believe.

tuckerpo• 4 years ago

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.

Laser desorption mass spectrometry – Alien detector that fits in your hand

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