There are a lot of ways the most abstract and sophisticated kinds of science show up in our daily lives.  In a nation that’s forgetting the power and promise of its own scientific endeavor, it’s good to be reminded of that link as I was recently when I went in for MRI.

MRI stands for Magnetic Resonance Imager.  Really the process is called NMRI with the N standing for nuclear.  The medical field has dropped the “Nuclear” part because it freaks a lot of people out.  I could get snarky about that but I won’t because I can see how getting an MRI is already freaky enough for most folks. You get slid into a tube. Then you lie perfectly still while the enormous machine surrounding you makes lots of weird, scary and very loud noises. 

Afterwards I felt some sympathy for torpedos. But the coolness factor totally overwhelmed everything else. 

During an MRI powerful magnetic fields in the machine induce the protons inside the hydrogen atoms inside the water molecules inside your body to flip back and forth in controlled patterns. As the protons flip back and forth they emit radio waves which the machine picks up and then assembles into a high-resolution view inside your skin. 

From spinning protons to pictures of your innards, that is pretty amazing.

Now here is the historical rub. The whole procedure works because years ago someone invented Quantum Physics - am abstract theory about how atoms and subatomic particles work. And before that, someone else invented Electromagnetic Theory which describes how the flow of electric currents generate radiation (i.e. light of different wavelengths).  There was also a huge amount of other stuff that really hardworking and creative scientists had to dream up. 

All of fits together in just the right so we can now get high resolution images of the goop inside you body .  

From the medical perspective, since seeing what’s going on is the first step to fixing what’s going on, the MRI has proven to be something of a miracle in the domains of healing.  The key point today is that miracle rests on a simultaneously broad and deep understanding of how nature works.  It’s so broad and deep that few people can really trace the full path from basic physics theory all the way up to biological/health diagnostics.  And yet we all rely on these machines when we need them.  We rely on the experts (which has become a dirty word in some places) who design, built and run them. 

That’s why the MRI - in all its freaky, clanking, buzzing, whirring glory - is just one more example of the positive power of science in all our lives.

And if you want to know more, here are a couple of video’s that explain the basic physics of NMRI. 

— Adam Frank 🚀