How to Read a Closed Book

A researcher tests out the new terahertz imaging system. (Credit: Courtesy Barmak Heshmat) You still can’t judge a book by its cover, but it’s possible to read one without ever opening it. That certainly adds a new wrinkle to an age-old idiom. But it’s true; researchers at MIT and Georgia Tech built a prototype — key word prototype — imaging system that can read individual pages in a stack of papers. It’s an early demonstration, so we’re talking a stack of only nine pages, but it’s a start. And as the technology improves, it could someday give, say, museum curators, another tool to study ancient, fragile books they wouldn’t dare open.