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Explosives Detection Breakthrough Via Green Laser
retiarius writes "In keeping with celebrating the USA's
National Chemistry Week (aside from watching the hitcount
for Tom Lehrer's very chemical music video at
CD Baby), I'm duly impressed by an amazingly simple new way to
detect explosives at a distance -- just use a store-bought
presentation green laser pointer and some dimestore
infrared night vision glasses! The (alas, patentable)
details are in
this week's EE Times."
A quick read of this article suggests that this will have a false positive problem with meat products. The nitrite (NO2) groups found in explosives that glow IR when exposed to green light are also found in meat products. I'm surprised the researchers did not test this potential source of false postives because other explosives detection technologies that look for nitrogen are also fooled by meat products.
Eat a hot dog or deli sandwich before going through security and you may end up in the dreaded secondary screening line when the bomb detector mistakes bologna for a bomb.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
It is GOOD that the information is public. Who cares about patenting something like this? We are talking about saving lives. Anyone who tries to patent something SO USEFUL to every country in the world is a greedy bastard.
Once debugged (meat), the mfr will probably be able to sell the devices to the govt. If they charge too much, the GSA (procurement) will go out for bids. Local and state bomb squads will have more trouble, but the Federal govt could just give them detectors under some fancy pgm.
ok, that means that to build a bomb you need laboratory equipment with gas control (think big glass box) and a tight seal allowing you access to the INSIDE of the bomb container.
:generous grease application for example) then flush air, introduce clean container cap, close container...
you then have to find a way to seal the container air-tight (low-tech
ok.. we just upped the ante and non-professionnal bomb makers won't be able to make the technological jump...=>more security
but it's nothing that someone with some organisation couldn't do...but we have to assume anyone with that sort of hardware is checked and easier to find out.
Alas, after going through this procedure (or any other they think of) they (terrorists-bomber-mad(wo)men now only have to get said night visions googles and green laser and test it themselves...
just another check in in the seemingly already complicated art of making bombs (I wouldn't know, as IANAB -I Am Not A Bomber - 8p )
I think they should have kept it a secret longer, even if they precised it was already one year old...
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
So the physical fact that green lasers and NVGs can be used to detect explosives, of resideue, (or soap), is now a patentable process.
Never mind all that stuff about physical phenomena being unpatentable. Here at the USPTO we grant with prejudice to trifling things like gross obviousness, unoriginality and indeed patentablity itself.
Applicants for patents on Earth, Air, Fire and Water are now currently being considered.
P.S.
If anyone, including all you foreigners, doesn't like it, be prepared for our lawyers to WIPO you into povert^H^H^H^H^H^Hsubmission.
May the Maths Be with you!
They've been looking for a good remote land mine sensor. Maybe this is it!
Can it see if a bag contains a bomb or some one's school books from outside? That would be useful. I have lost count of how many times I have been held up because someone left a bag somewhere and they had to call in the bomb squad to see if it is a bomb or someone's laundry/groceries/school books etc. This is not a place where you want false negatives!
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the detection scheme described in the article (two infrared sensors, one with a 705-nm filter, and the other without a filter to eliminate false positives) be easy to fool by masking the explosive with another substance that also photoluminesces at 705-nm?
For example, suppose non-explosive substance foo photoluminesces at and around 705-nm, and is normally allowed past the detector because it lacks the special signature. If you were to put a bunch of foo in the same container as your explosive, thereby combining the infrared signatures (if that's actually what would happen), couldn't you fool the detector?
Of course, the article is light on real details, and I'm no chemistry expert, so maybe it's not that easy to fool.
They already have the night-vision goggles. Might only work for detection at night, but that's better than the current status quo...
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I've always wondered about this... Whether it's dogs sniffing drugs or million dollar machines sniffing for explosives - Why don't the bad guys just contaminate the entire area so that you can't use the detector? I mean, wouldn't somebody walking around spilling some nitrate material all over the airport carpets just ruin that airport permanently?
If it's so sensitive that the bad guys can't cleanse themselves of it, how could one possibly clean an entire airport?
Pat
1) This is simple, non-contact method but it relies on a spectral signature general for nitramines and nitro-aromatics. Some chemicals used in parfumery (artificial musk scent) have nitro groups - so there will be false positives.
2) This method will not work for acetonperoxide (the super-unstable explosive prefered by Palestinian suicide bombers and the wannabe shoe-bomber Reid - because acetonperoxide does not contain any nitros) and for fertilizer bombs (no volatile nitroorganics there).
3)Also, this detection method can be fooled by masking the narrow fluorescence signature of nitro explosives by adding other chemicals with broad fluorescence to confuse the instrument into thinking "this is a false positive". All it takes for the bad guys to get hold of the detection device and experiment with some common household, drugstore or paintshop materials to find the right stuff to spray onto their luggage making it immune for this detection. It may well be that a laundry softener or moskyto repellent can threw this techique off.
4) The currently used swab-tests/mass spectrometry analysis at the airports recognize very characteristic ion mass (of the parent molecule and its fragments) - the signal pattern unique for each explosive, so this masspec method is harder to fool and less likely to give false positives.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it