Well, I knew it would happen eventually. Perdue researchers have created a real life tricorder. They are not the first company to claim this…an officially license “real” tricorder was released a few years ago, but this device is much different, and most more powerful and useable.

The instrument is a miniature mass spectrometer combined with a technique called desorption electrospray ionization, or DESI. The device and technique were developed by a team of researchers led by R. Graham Cooks, the Henry Bohn Hass Distinguished Professor of Analytical Chemistry in Purdue’s College of Science.

“Conventional mass spectrometers analyze samples that are specially prepared and placed in a vacuum chamber,” Cooks said. “The key DESI innovation is performing the ionization step in the air or directly on surfaces outside of the mass spectrometer’s vacuum chamber.”

Unlike conventional mass spectrometers, which are cumbersome laboratory instruments that weigh more than 300 pounds, the new handheld device weighs less than 20 pounds and can be used in the field.

“We like to compare it to the tricorder because it is truly a handheld instrument that yields information about the precise chemical composition of samples in a matter of minutes without harming the samples,” Cooks said.

What’s the most surprising to me, I suppose, is how much the device looks like an earlier version of the actual Star Trek Tricorder. Take a look at these comparison shots:

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