A pair of Caltech engineers took an ordinary microchip and tweaked it so it can see through solid materials. These X-ray-like chips are inexpensive and can be installed on phones or tablets in the future.

We bet your kids would just love to get a peek at their presents this holiday season. These days, as long as you wrap your gifts well and keep them out of your kids’ reach, you don’t have to worry about young, inquisitive eyes spoiling their own surprise. In the future, however, they might be able to look through a well-wrapped gift and know what it contains with the aid of their phone. The same technology could be used for an array of applications, including security, health, and even gaming.

Ali Hajimiri and Kaushik Sengupta, a duo of electrical engineers at the California Institute of Technology, have developed silicon microchips that radiate high-frequency electromagnetic waves called terahertz (THz) waves. These waves can pass through solid materials and send back detailed images of what lies behind them. Lying between microwaves and far-infrared radiation, they’re also not harmful like ionizing X-rays. Scientists have long been developing technologies that can utilize the power of terahertz waves, but what’s great about this one is that the special chips were made out of inexpensive, ordinary microchips like the ones used on your phones and tablets. Many existing terahertz systems are costly and bulky at the same time. 

Hajimiri and Sengupta believe their technology could be used in many areas, such as by law enforcement to detect explosives and other threats; in the food industry to determine the components of food (such as the fat content of chicken tissue); in the gaming industry for touchless controls; and in medicine for noninvasive cancer diagnosis. ”We are not just talking about a potential,” Hajimiri said. ”We have actually demonstrated that this works. The first time we saw the actual images, it took our breath away.” Of course, just like other emerging technologies, these chips could be abused the moment they become readily available. After all, being able to see through solid material is a creeper’s dream come true. 

(Image credit: Vince at Flickr)

For a short period last night, prospective buyers of Halo 4's new Crimson Map Pack were able to snag the entire DLC offering for free. Now, after the fact, Microsoft and 343 Industries claim that this was part of the plan all along.

After finishing up my work for Digital Trends last night, I decided to unwind by playing a few multiplayer matches in 343 Industries’ recently-released blockbuster shooter Halo 4. Noticing that the game’s first DLC map pack had just appeared on the Xbox Live Marketplace, I thought to myself that the $10 price point it featured was a perfectly reasonable amount of cash to spend on three new multiplayer arenas. Thus, I clicked through to the Xbox Live Marketplace option at the bottom of Halo 4′s main menu, pulled up the Crimson Map Pack listing and instructed my Xbox 360 to download the 500MB-plus addition.

That’s when things got a bit strange. My console responded to my command immediately and started pulling down the data that would eventually make up the Crimson Map Pack. That’s pretty typical, but what’s odd here is that the Xbox Live Marketplace never actually deducted the 800 Microsoft Points (read: $10USD) from my Xbox Live account. Realizing that I needed to explore this anomaly further, I started looking into the issue, but the Internet had surprisingly little to tell me about what was going on.

At the time, the best I could find were a handful of comments on this Joystiq article detailing the issues 343 Industries was having in making the DLC available to owners of the Halo 4 Limited Edition bundle (which is supposed to offer players early access to the game’s DLC offerings). The very first comment on that piece echoes my confusing issue. “For some reason when I clicked Xbox Live Marketplace on the main menu it let me download the Crimson Map Pack for free,” writes Dylan Chatland, seemingly as bewildered by this turn of events as I was.

At this point I realized I was getting nowhere and instead decided to contact Microsoft directly to ask the publisher what exactly was going on. A few hours later we received a reply from Microsoft representatives. “We are aware of the situation. I’m working on getting more details,” they told us.

Roughly 12 hours after our initial email we received a substantial response from Microsoft. It reads as follows:

As an additional reward to those customers that participated in our “14 Day, Buy and Play” program (which ran from Nov. 6 – Nov. 20), we are providing complimentary access to the Crimson Map Pack for a limited time, through Tuesday, December 18 at 9am UTC/GMT.

You’ll notice that this is the first we’ve heard of this promotional effort. Assuming Microsoft or 343 Industries had planned a stealthy release of the Crimson Map Pack specifically for a select group of players, wouldn’t one of the companies have mentioned all of this prior to its debut? The only other alternative we can imagine is that somebody at either of the aforementioned firms made a glaring mistake and in an effort to minimize public damage the companies have decided to simply leave well enough alone. Those who picked up the Crimson Map Pack for free will get to keep their DLC, at least for a limited time.

So does this mean that come December 18 those free Map Packs will no longer function? We asked Microsoft, and have yet to hear back. Further, we also asked the company if this newly-revealed scheme was an effort to cover up an internal error. We’ve yet to receive a response to that inquiry as well. If Microsoft offers us a reply we’ll be sure to bring it to you, but for now we should probably assume that the gratis Crimson Map Pack is a time sensitive offer.

With that in mind, is anyone up for a bit of Infinity Slayer on Harvest? We may not have access to the map for long, so we may as well make good use of it, huh?