Chasing the light: Vermont scientists study Terahertz mystery
When you are exploring hidden sections of the electromagnetic spectrum, it doesn’t really matter where on the planet you happen to be.
You could be in a lab at Dartmouth College, which is where Michael Mross was in the late 1970s when he started to ponder that part of the spectrum known as Terahertz waves.
From Dartmouth, Mross moved to southern Vermont, where he partnered with Thomas Lowell in trying to devise an instrument that could help them understand this mysterious slice of the universe.
They set up an office in Brattleboro, and then Westminster. From there, they went to Putney and again to Brattleboro, before settling at 33 Bridge St. in Bellows Falls in a funky old mill, down the hall from an art studio and a community radio station.
“We’re working in the last frontier of the light spectrum,” Mross said on Thursday at his company’s new office. “Our customers are on the other end of the phone line. We could be anywhere.”
After trying to secure a place in Brattleboro, Mross and Lowell’s company, Vermont Photonics, opened in Bellows Falls this summer.
On Thursday, they held an open house and celebrated the initial delivery of $850,000 in federal money that Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., helped secure.
That money, Mross and Lowell both said, could help them make the next leap in their research that will open up the so-called Terahertz band to scientists around the world.
The Terahertz regime is sandwiched between microwaves and infrared light in the electromagnetic spectrum. And while scientists have been cramming the spectrum with everything from radio and television waves to microwaves, X-rays and lasers, the Terahertz section remains empty and full of questions.
Terahertz technology remains a relatively under-studied science, due to what Mross called an historical accident.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, people like Thomas Edison and Guglielmo Marconi were discovering how light and radio waves could be manipulated, and by the 1950s, families around the country were watching Milton Berle on television.
In 1959, Gordon Gould built a light laser, and the Terahertz band on the electromagnetic spectrum was left behind in a cloud of cosmic dust.
Dollars followed the laser and eventually led to X-rays and microwaves.
Mross pointed to a chart in his office showing the electromagnetic spectrum. Most of the chart is stuffed with inventions like light bulbs and laser beams — but, just about in the middle, it is empty.
Nobody knows what exactly is in the Terahertz band and no one really knows what it might be used for, but Mross and Lowell say they are getting close to shedding some light on the mystery.
Since 1985, Vermont Photonics has been the exclusive American distributor for specialized optical test equipment from Germany. The profit from the sales of this equipment, which is sold to companies like Kodak, Boeing Co. and NASA, helped fund their true passion: Developing a laser technology powerful enough to discover what lies within the Terahertz gap.
They estimate that about $3 million has gone into their research to date.
In the middle of the warehouse space in Bellows Falls stand two prototypes of their Terahertz device.
They look like a mangle of 1970s-era stereo equipment, with knobs and wires protruding out of all ends. Off to the side, a large silver turbo pump looms like a futuristic espresso machine. If you passed it on the street in a pile in front of a house, it would probably barely merit a second look.
“We got a kazoo and we want to turn it into a trombone,” Lowell explained. “Nothing exists like this. This is blue sky territory.”
But Mross and Lowell say they are far ahead of any other scientist in the world, and closer to tapping into the potential of the undiscovered mysteries that lie hidden within the Terahertz band.
They say others write papers about it, and there are plenty of theories out there, but no one, they claim, has a machine like theirs.
For two decades, they chased that light, believing there were applications in science and medicine. It was not until Leahy helped win a lucrative contract with Goodrich Corp. that all those years of experiments and trials began to pay off.
The two men believe that if they perfect their instrument it will one day be able to “read” molecules in different proteins. The Goodrich contract was drawn in the hopes that they could devise a light that could detect harmful microbes like anthrax. They expect to get there by the end of this year.
“We don’t understand what it will be used for, but the rest of the spectrum is all used.”
“Life is magic,” said Mross. “Scientists really don’t understand how living things operate. This technology could open secrets to what life is all about. Our mission is to be engaged long enough so we can be the ones to be there in the end.”
Source: Brattleboro Reformer