Sci-Fi Meets Real Life: See Through Concrete Walls

Researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory have just figured out how to see through concrete walls up to 8 inches thick and from 60 feet away. When I heard this, I got giddy because I thought it was going to mean we could be like Superman and actually look through concrete walls and see exactly what is on the other side, like x-ray vision. That would be cool, right? Although the technology is fabulous, and I don’t want to take anything away from that, it isn’t quite like Superman.

I remember hearing my great grandmother talk about televisions when they first came out. They were black and white, you could barely see a clear picture, but people loved them anyway and thought they were great. This is kind of like that. It does show what is on the other side of the concrete wall, but it displays it in a series of colorful blobs. However, just like television, I’m sure this is just the beginning for this technology.

In case you were wondering, this is being developed for warfare situations. Even the sneakiest person can be detected by this badboy. According to Popsci, it’s “a radar array that provides a realtime picture of what’s happening on the other side of solid concrete walls. By leveraging signal amplifiers, a clever filtering technique, and some powerful digital processing, this new radar system is able to produce what amounts to a realtime video of movements on the other side of a solid wall at 10.8 frames per second.” If you want to read all the geeky details, you can click over to MIT News.