Doctor Who's Sonic Screwdriver: Now a thing

Anyone who's a fan of the classic 1960s-2000s British sci-fi Doctor Who will know of the sonic screwdriver, a wondrous device capable of being anything from a lockpick to a Whovian equivalent of Star Trek's tricorder. It has served the Doctor (and presumably the other Gallifryeans - when they were still around) very well over his many incarnations.

And, of course, there have been countless fan-built - and commercially-built - replicas. But now, intrepid scientists* at Dundee University in the UK have created an ultrasound device - which, in the press release, they have actually called a sonic screwdriver - that uses a helical beam of ultrasound to turn objects.

Having a quick nose through the press release, I notice that the beam is made of up several helixes. If you've played Portal 2, the ultrasound beam would look probably look a bit like an Aperture Science Excursion Funnel - if you could see it.

The Aperture Science Excursion Funnel - what the sonic screwdriver beam might look like, if you could actually see the thing. (Picture credit: The Half-Life Wiki.)

But the boffins at Dundee Uni aren't doing it because they're fans of the show - this bad boy is a proof of concept which, the scientists say, could be applied to non-invasive ultrasound surgery, amongst other things.

I just hope the BBC doesn't sue for the use of the name. And... anyone building a TARDIS?


Story source: The Mary Sue, who got it from The Beat, who got it from the BBC. Now all we need is for another website to reference Sense Deprived as a source, and we're good to go!


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* I have to admit that I've never heard of scientists who aren't intrepid, although given infinite diversity in infinite combinations, they must exist...