Super-Sensitive Spray-On Explosive Detector

esocid writes "US scientists have designed a new spray-on explosive detector sensitive enough to detect just a billionth of a gram of (nitrogen-containing) explosive. After treatment, the explosive glows blue under UV light, making the detector perfect for use in the field. The silafluorene-fluorene copolymer can detect explosives at much lower levels than existing systems because it detects particles instead of explosive vapors, and is able to show the difference between nitrate esters (trinitroglycerin) and nitroaromatic explosives (TNT). The team is currently working on a similar system to detect peroxide-based explosives and say they hope to be able to investigate perchlorates and organic nitrates, too."

Comments

Won't this creat a lot of false positives?

[iminplaya]

95% percent of our paper money contains microscopic amounts of cocaine, imagine if we use such sensitive equipment to detect it. We'd all be locked up. Mmmm...maybe that's the intention.

I lost faith in the current system

[Groo Wanderer]

I lost faith in the current airport explosives detectors when I found out that Bondo products set them off. It was a hilarious hour or so watching a broken system thrash about trying to figure out why their machine kept beeping when there were clearly no explosives in my bag.

Did I mention that this was after a Defcon in the Las Vegas airport?

I lost what little respect I had in the system (note: Not the people you would ever see on the floor, they have been pretty OK for the most part) at that point.

Between the War On Moisture, pointless shoe removal, and a TSA that can't ever answer any question with the word 'Why' in it, I have absolutely zero faith in the system any more.

I am a frequent flier, put in over 100K miles last year and am on track to do more than that this year. If you simply go through the airports enough, you can trivially avoid any security measure there is, it isn't even a trick.

So, spray on bomb detectors? Great. So? Send the bad guys through security 25 times and you will see several obvious ways to not get it checked. Game over.

          -Charlie

Re:I lost faith in the current system

[Amouth]

you might get a kick out of this ..

two years ago a friend of mine was going back west for xmass to see his family - they are all gun owners and enjoy shooting. He has an AR-15.. apprently ammo is much more expensive out west than here in NC.. so he did his homework and looked up the laws on carrying his AR-15 and ammo with him to go out west.

he went out and bought the special padded ammo case - and padded gun case that met the requirements.

when i drove him to the airport.. i went in with him just to make sure they didn't become asses about it and make him leave his gun (if they did i would takeit home).. anyways.. the gun was fine.. the ammo they looked at.. opened.. and spent 30min talking about.. then came to the conclusion.. that he could take it BUT on take the ammo that was still in the orginal manufacturs boxes.. there for the loose shells in the fome inserts couldn't be taken.

so they took about 40 live rounds of 7.62 out of it.. put it in a clear zipplock bag and handed it to me to stand and wait in the security check line till he boarded the plane....

so for about an hour every single person is looking at me funny.. and i have to explain to ever damn cop/marine flying home why i have this .. yet the airport security people never said a damn thing to me.

at that point i think it would be safer to replace airport security with Honda robot's.. as they follow scripts better and would be less likly to be ass holes to people they didn't like

DOS attack

[snsh]

I never understood what happens when an airport baggage handler gets a second job as a landscaper, and comes to work every day covered in nitrates, and spreads it on everyone's luggages? How do chemical detectors deal with all these sources of noise?