New Sensor Technology Looks at Molecular 'Fingerprint'

New sensor technology developed by engineers at the US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory can now detect chemical, biological, nuclear, and explosive materials much more quickly and efficiently. From the article: "The millimeter/terahertz technology detects the energy levels of a molecule as it rotates. The frequency distribution of this energy provides a unique and reproducible spectral pattern - its 'fingerprint' - that identifies the material. The technology can also be used in its imaging modality - ranging from concealed weapons to medical applications such as tumor detection."

Comments

Mystery Robot Solved?

[HappyClown]

I wonder if this technology is similar to what (might) be being used here:
Mystery Robot

Not new at all?

[nasor]

Um...rotational spectroscopy is not new at all. It's been around for a very long time - at least 50 years, probably longer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotational_spectrosco py

Re:Not new at all?

[ergo98]

Um...rotational spectroscopy is not new at all. It's been around for a very long time - at least 50 years, probably longer.

Maybe you should read the article first. The breakthrough is the extreme degree of sensitivity, coupled with the fact that it's doing the analysis passively (versus targeting molecules with lasers/microwaves).

Re:Not new at all?

[nasor]

The passive sensing is also not new. You can find journal articles about it going back at least 3-4 years; I don't have any off hand, but if you have access to a scientific journal database you can probably find them pretty quickly.

I don't recall the sensitivity of the technique given in the other articles that are out there, but then there isn't any hard data on sensitivity in this "article" either; just a reference to getting within 10 ppm in one particular test. Since they don't give the concentration of what they were measuring, this is of little value. 10 ppm error in something with parts-per-thousand concentration is pretty good. In something with parts-per-billion concentration, it's pretty bad. The information that they give in meaningless without knowing the circumstances of the test.

Re:Not new at all?

[7ft_Big_Guy]

It's old technology on a new level... Basically it's MRI or Magnetic Resonance Imaging. MR Spectroscopy is probably 40-50 years old, and has been getting into smaller and smaller packages over the years... With new methodologies of Integrated Circuit manufacturing, more sensitive and noise resistant receivers can be built. I's kind of like radar... you have a sample (person, luggage, test tube with chemicals in it etc) and pass it thru a magnetic field... as it passes thru the field, you send a radio frequency pulse out that "scatters" the magnetic moments of the atoms in the sample... as they recombine back to being parallel with each other, they generate a specific frequency that is unique to the molecule they are in. with a bunch of signals coming back from a single sample, you can know what compounds are in the sample and in what proportions... look that up in a simple table and bingo, you have whatever the substance is identified.

iran?

[ganjadude]

From TFA:

  "We can use this technology to detect chemical and biological agents and also to determine if a country is using its nuclear reactors to produce material for nuclear weapons or to track the direction of a chemical or radioactive plume to evacuate an area," explained Paul Raptis, section manager. Raptis is developing these sensors with Argonne engineers Sami Gopalsami, Sasan Bakhtiari and Hual-Te Chien.

It seems as if this is good news, the ability to decide if they really are WMD's or just a new fuel source for some 3rd world country that he had no reason to invade. Perhaps this can be tested with the Iranian issues of today.

This is all fine and good,

[glassjaw rocks]

But without any mobility of the device, this just wont work. Sure, it can detect if anything is amiss in a radius of 600 meters, but beyond that, it would be pretty expensive to implement in all major areas of the US.

Of course, I would feel pretty good seeing one at airports.

Radioactive plumes

[sssmashy]

To remotely detect radiation from nuclear accidents or reactor operations, Argonne researchers are testing millimeter-wave radars and developing models to detect and interpret radiation-induced effects in air that cause radar reflection and scattering. Preliminary results of tests, in collaboration with AOZT Finn-Trade of St. Peterspurg, Russia, with instruments located 9 km from a nuclear power plant showed clear differences between when the plant was operating and when it was idling. This technology can also be applied to mapping plumes from nuclear radiation releases.

I was under the impression that properly functioning nuclear power plants shouldn't be releasing any kind of radiation into the air while operating, let alone enough radiocative plumes detectable from 9 km away. Then again, it is a Russian nuclear power plant, and Russians seem to have a much more relaxed attitude about that kind of thing.

Re:Radioactive plumes

[iamlucky13]

A properly operating power plant does not release any radioactive particles. There is still gamma radiation through the sides walls of the reactor. This is typically less than the background radiation from other sources. The fact that it is measurable is more a testament to the sensitivy of the instruments than the radiation level. It has been said that you receive more radiation watching TV for an hour each day than you do living a mile from a nuclear plant (what wavelengths is another question, though). As the section you quote says, they were observing the effects of radiation on the air molecules that change the way radar reflects off of them. I'm not sure what the effect is...probably just ionization of a few atoms.

If they can detect this, they can definitely detect a plume from a containment breach and hopefully map very accurately how it spreads.

Thanks Star Trek

[karrot]

Isn't this what the Tricoder from Star Trek did?

Don't forget the Maguire Seven

[Malc]

Nitroglycerine was detected on their hands and they were imprisoned on this "evidence". One of them died in prison before the conviction was quashed.

The application of these technologies needs to be used carefully, especially they are far more sensitive than the technologies employed in the 70s. Perhaps good for screening, but we must careful in trusting them when it comes to the courts.

Re:What About ...

[mrjb]

Cylons no. But it *does* detect any conceiled weapons they're carrying...

I highly doubt it...

[cr0sh]

First off, take a look at that "robot" again (the picture in the NGEO article). Does that look like any kind of "research robot" you have ever seen? At best, it looks like something an amateur robotics experimenter might build, from a variety of parts picked up from various locations.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't discount such robotics. Over the years, many great things have been done in robotics using COTS "junk" and such by such amateurs. Unfortunately, this whole thing seems to scream "scam" to me. Those transducers on the front seem like speakers ripped from some center channel surround sound speaker. The metal-shell body with small access panels, a cheesy light on top, along with an even cheesier obviously fake dish antenna (with no apparent directional control - what is the point of such an antenna, which if it was real would be directional, and would need directional control for communications on a mobile platform?), which looks like it came from one of those "get cable signal quality without a cable box" scam antenna's from the 1980's. Finally, the wheels and such look like they belong to a cheap radio-control 4WD "monster truck" toy - complete to the "bling chrome" rims. Which wouldn't be much of an issue, except it doesn't look like the thing can turn, unless it is using differential steering instead of Ackerman (sp?) (which would be the normal mode of steering for a RC vehicle unless it was a tank, which the wheels don't appear to be from).

The thing just looks cheap, cheap, cheap - and not at all like something you would expect - even a prototype - to look like for research and development purposes where there is money supposedly being invested. I have seen more highly advanced amateur robots built using COTS parts found on Ebay, by dudes in their garages on shoestring budgets, that were way better built than this thing. Honestly, it looks like something I once cobbled together when I was a kid in grammar school. It just has an air of a scam - it looks like the equivalent of those scam perpetual "energy motors" and their inventors that you see so often. Stuff enough crap together, stick it in front of an audience not versed in what they are seeing, ask for some money for investment - standard scam stuff. Finally - normally I wouldn't comment on this - but what kind of facial expression is that on that man (Manuel Salinas)? He looks somewhere between drunk, stoned, and hit with a 2x4. Maybe he just was having a bad day?

Anyhow - enough of what I think. I did some googling on the guy and his robot. A few minutes of research turned up this blog entry about the guy and his "technology"...

Scam? Most likely...

Thank god I'm an american

[Acy James Stapp]

I can rest assured that this technology will only be used to catch terrorists and certainly never to infringe on my constitutionally protected right to be secure in my person, house, papers, and effects. Unless I'm at an airport. Or a public street. Or looking suspicious. Or sitting in my house.

Who watches the watcher?

[mcrbids]

Technologies that were formerly infeasible or unreliable frequently take on new life as the sweeping wave of information technology washes by.

Thus, an ancient, esoteric, expensive, and minimally useful technology (rotational spectroscopy) is suddenly viable as a new, privacy-piercing technology.

Which brings me to my point: Are we going to sit back and watch our freedoms erode due to the lack of the basic privacy we've taken for granted for so long, or are we going to restructure our society so that we can preserve our freedoms despite the fact that privacy is dying its last breaths?

Link goes to the most insightful and useful article I've ever seen that illucidates the problem nicely, while providing a solution we can sink our teeth into. If you haven't read it yet, I strongly urge you to do so.

Where the United States goes, I can only guess. But I'm quite sure that the next free society will apply the lessons in the link above.

To put it succintly...

[vuo]

They have created the radar equivalent of the widely used IR spectroscopy. There is a technique for an isolated, single sample - IR spectroscopy - which requires you to dissolve the sample in a solvent and place it on a salt crystal. The new technology gives this literally new dimensions - two, as you can see should you RTFA, by using terahertz frequencies. Terahertz frequencies are difficult to generate experimentally and their behavior is largely unknown to science, unlike IR (can be created by a lamp) or radio (can be created by an oscillator). This application is truly revolutionary.

This invention is comparable to MRI (nuclear magnetic resonance imaging), which is tomography with NMR, which also was a "dissolved sample only" kind of spectroscopy. Introducting gradients to the field allowed you to locate the resonating nuclei in two dimensions, enabling tomography in three dimensions.

Expect a Nobel Prize in physics for this.