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Engineered Bacteria Glows To Reveal Land Mines

Posted by kdawson on from the lamp-unto-your-feet dept.

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."

4 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. Legitimately good idea by Draque · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Am I the only one here who is aware of how bad of a problem land mines are to civilians in many third world countries? The response here seems generally negative, but if this technology helps to diffuse old land mine fields, it would be wonderful. Just because it was planted in WW2 doesn't guarantee that it's become inactive or that it won't kill you now.

  2. Re:Pitch by Maximum+Prophet · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Or, after one or more mines explode, does the entire field become tainted with explosive residue?

    --
    All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
  3. Re:too erasy in the daytimes.. by vlm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They don't turn green, they glow green.

    Kind of like the goo inside a green chemlight...

    In the old days, if you wanted to do the area denial thing, you had to buy these expensive, heavy, hard to install landmines.

    Then it was discovered you could scare the other guys away merely by using signs that say "landmine". In fact there is a UN standard / requirement for posting landmine signs around a minefield, scary white triangles, if I recall...

    Now, technology marches on, and all you need is a big pack of green chemlights from walmart... crack them, drip the liquid in a field, and instant, cheap, area denial... Its also economic warfare, since mine field clearing is very expensive compared to buying a bunch of chemlights. Its also very demoralizing to the troops to know that glowing stuff might or might not be fake.

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  4. Re:Pitch by PRMan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I had a co-worker from Afghanistan in the past (nice guy). He said that his uncle would do it is to buy a field with land mines on it for cheap and then just let a herd of goats graze the property. If a goat exploded, that one was dinner.

    Simple. Cheap. Effective.

    --
    Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...