Some engineers at the University of Princeton have come up with a new system to detect bombs – with the use of lasers. The system works by sending out a beam of light to a volume of air that needs to be sampled, which then returns a beam of laser from the air itself right into a detector. With the detector, the concentration of chemicals found in the air sample can be detected to determine if there are any bombs in the area. This method is said to be able to detect even the faintest traces of chemicals and can even be used for other purposes such as sampling the air for greenhouse gases and pollutants. When this technology gets perfected and is applied in the real world, it’s time to say goodbye to sniffer dogs or handheld detectors. These lasers will make it much safer and efficient to detect bombs – by being out of the bomb’s blast radius; nobody needs to get hurt by accidentally triggering bombs again.
[image credit: ucdavis.edu]