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Engineered Bacteria Glows To Reveal Land Mines
MikeChino writes "Sifting through minefields to remove hidden threats is a dangerous, tedious, and expensive process. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh recently announced that they have engineered a strain of bacteria that glows green in the presence of explosives, making mine detection a snap. The new strain of bacteria can be sprayed onto local affected areas or air-dropped over entire fields of mines. Within a few hours the bacteria strain begins to glow wherever traces of explosive chemicals are present."
Exploded mines and artillery shells leave unburnt residue.
Wow, you've identified an imperfection. I guess we'd all better quit and not bother then.
Seriously, is this how the world looks from the safety of your basement, where you can't be bothered to go out 'cause everthing isn't perfect?
This is a brilliant and useful addtion to the deminer's toolkit, and any potential issues are tiny compared to the added value it gives. Having poked around the problem of demining (I'm a sensors and image processing guy, not a biochemistry guy) I can say that this idea is clever and useful, despite the whining of armchair critics.
The added information this stuff would give deminers is worth a lot. Obviously other sources of explosive material is going to show up, but tell me, can you see from your basement how the distribution pattern of those other sources will differ from the distribution pattern of intact mines?
Can you see in your imagination how it might be more diffuse, say? Or how the pattern from intact mines might
actually contain some information as to the depth and age and type of the mine?
No, of course you can't, because you stopped thinking at the moment you thought of a plausible deviation from perfection--I can tell because you didn't even bother to complete your comment with the clearly implicity "therefore this is useless". And if you don't think it's useless, why didn't you say so, because anyone reading your comment sure would think that's what you were saying. So you should work on either improving your thinking skills, or your communications skills, or both.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
If only there were some kind of treaty for making these things illegal so that the United States, China, Russia, and India could sign it. oh wait...
I didn't mention fluorescence. Neither did the article.
Posting to correct your misconception about artichokes.
Wooosh or read much? Just so you're clear, fluorescence does not mean 'glows in the dark.' Wooosh on!
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck