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Using Radio Waves to Detect Explosives
deadmantyping writes "A Japanese research group published a paper describing a method to detect explosives in luggage using radio waves. The method relies upon nitrogen nuclear quadrapole resonance (NQR) and is able to distinguish between different white powders, whereas currently used x-ray technology is not."
Hmmm.... seems plausable, since if my memory serves me correctly, all matter gives off a distinct waveform. Just one question (or problem?), what happens if the crazy terrorist (er.. freedom fighter) decides to make a trigger which works off of radio waves (or whatever particular radio wave) said name future machine may use?
Regards,
MBC1977,
Please take off your: jacket, shoes, backpack (and take the laptop out of the backpack and put it in a seperate tray), hat, belt, mobile phone, keys, wallet (if it contains more than 3 rfid based entry keycards). Yes, I travelled international recently. It's not even consistent.. some places they'll make you take off your belt, other places, no, that's fine.
Time before last I took a suit coat with me. Big solid metal coat hanger with nice sharp edges. They just let me carry it onto the plane. Had I tried to take a similar piece of metal on (say, a boxcutter) they would have denied me. Hmmm, wonder if there's a little big of class disparity there.
The illusion of safety.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Nothing (plausible) can detect everything that might be explosive, Actually even what an explosive is can be kind of ambiguous; still I've read that terrorists are more likely to use peroxide based explosives rather than nitrate based explosives. I see the nitrogen nuclear quadrupole resonance as have more potential in finding IED in the road beds in places like Iraq.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
NQR detectors tend to be relatively slow to examine an area, and a very important factor in Iraq is a fast rate of advance. NQR might work for airports, but other systems -- like metal detectors and backscatter radars -- work better when you need to go fast. The military mostly looks at NQR as a confirmation technology for other detectors and not as the first line of explosive threat detection. (Google "NQR rate of advance" for various papers and studies on the issue.)