Micro-ear that could help eavesdrop on tiny events may soon be a reality

London, February 27 (ANI): Researchers are working on a micro-ear that could help eavesdrop on tiny events.

Experts at the Universities of Glasgow and Oxford as well as the National Institute of Medical Research are creating the device that they hope will help them "listen to" how a drug disrupts micro-organisms.

"We are now using the sensitivity afforded by the optical tweezer as a very sensitive microphone. The optical tweezer can measure or manipulate at piconewton forces," The BBC quoted Professor Jon Cooper from the University of Glasgow, who is heading the micro-ear project, as saying.

Prof Miles Padgett added: " We can trap and hold the beads and can connect the output to a speaker so we can hear them vibrating."

Dr Richard Berry, a physicist at the University of Oxford, intends to test the device, once it is built, to eavesdrop on flagella, the tiny motor that many bacteria such as E. coli use to move themselves around

Dr Berry said: "Its truly exploratory in that we expect and hope we will hear something interesting but we really don't know."