Bomb Detection Chip Is Super Sensitive

Going out of the house requires plenty of faith – faith that your mode of transport is going to get you to your destination safe and sound, and in one piece, as well as faith that all will go well without any terrorist plot involving bombs crossing your path to send you to the afterlife on a one way ticket. Having said that, a bunch of Israeli researchers have managed to come up with a new kind of bomb detection chip which is so sensitive, that this prototype chip is capable of recognizing explosives from up to a whopping 16 feet away, now how about that?

This particular chip, assuming it is perfected and mass produced eventually, will make use of groups of nano-scale transistors which are capable of reacting to small electrical changes whenever certain kinds of chemicals pass by. Just how sensitive is it? Alarms can be raised even when a few molecules are discovered out of 1,000 trillion. Just in case you were wondering, prior techniques will issue an alert when they find such molecules within a per billion range, going to show just how far we have advanced to date.

Does this mean that bomb sniffing dogs are now out of a job? Not quite, as much work needs to be done where this prototype chip is concerned, and hopefully it will be able to tell the difference between a false alarm and the real deal eventually. Image courtesy of David Paul Morris via Getty Images.

Edwin Kee
Categories: General
Tags: Science