Scientists have developed a technology that can retrieve sounds recorded in the walls around us.
The surface of every wall in a room is made up of millions and millions of atoms.
Each atom is a collection of electrons, protons and neutrons - all electrically charged and constantly moving.
When anyone inside a room speaks, the sound carries energy that travels in waves and hits the walls.
This energy causes nano-perturbations in the walls’ surface.
The new technology uses lasers to recreate the recorded sounds by reading the perturbations in the surface and reconstructing the waves, much like a sound hologram.
A detector can demodulate the interference pattern in the light and play it back as sound, faithfully reproducing the words spoken minutes or even hours before.
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