London blasts underscore need for bomb-detection technology

EE Times ^ | 9 July 2005 | R. Colin Johnson

[nickcarraway]

MANHASSET, N.Y. — Michael Henning recalls a yellow light and then silver lines flashing before his eyes. The light came from one of the four terrorist bombs detonated in London last week; the silver lines were flying shards of glass.

Though badly cut around his face, Henning was a fortunate survivor of the series of attacks, which killed more than 50 and injured more than 700. As the world reacted to the news from London, the question arose again: How can technology help prevent such attacks?

Detecting a bomb in a public space like a bus or a building is technologically doable, according to engineers and researchers working on such devices today. The solutions won't come cheap, and it will be at least a year before devices sensitive enough to prevent disasters like last week's bombings are deployed.

But "when terrorists are willing to go to the extremes we have seen, the one thing we have to fight them is technology," said Bonner Denton, a professor at Arizona State University.

Denton has invented a capacitive transimpedance amplifier that he claims increases the sensitivity of ion-mobility spectrometers by a thousandfold, thereby enabling 100 percent of passengers to be efficiently screened. Denton collaborated with researchers at Sandia National Laboratories (Albuquerque, N.M.) to develop the device. Sandia is using it in a "microhound" explosives detector that it says will replace bomb-sniffing dogs.

Bogdan Maglich is cautiously optimistic that technology will help foil terror attacks. "Dogs are great, but they take six months to train and don't work well in the heat," said Maglich, chief executive officer and founder of HiEnergy Technologies Inc. (Irvine, Calif.). On the other hand, "dogs have hundreds of billions of neurons," he said, whereas "the best electronic systems only have 100,000."

Maglich and his team — recognizing that conventional X-rays are, as he put it, "chemically blind" — turned to stoichiometry as a means of deciphering the empirical chemical formulas of substances.

In the team's scenario, abandoned packages or suspect car trunks are blasted with neutrons, and the signature of the emitted gamma rays is then used to determine the chemical makeup of the contents in anywhere from 15 seconds to 5 minutes, depending on the enclosure. The results can be analyzed on a remote PDA or laptop with an optical or wireless connection.

The big problem with airports and mass-transit systems is the large number of passengers who need to be screened quickly and unobtrusively. Airports today use screening portals, but it takes several seconds to screen each person. Thus, the portals are impractical for mass-transit systems used by millions every day.

Remote and real-time

New technologies with vastly increased sensitivity will not only allow more rapid passenger screening but will also detect concealed explosives from a distance.

[The Red Zone]

Bogdan Maglich is cautiously optimistic that technology will help foil terror attacks. "Dogs are great, but they take six months to train and don't work well in the heat,"

How about cats?

[John Filson]

London blasts underscore the need for rethinking... immigration policy.

[garyhope]

"London blasts underscore need for bomb-detection technology"

Nah, the London blasts underscore the need to nuke the Islamofascist world further back to their stone age existance. Get it over and done with. Allah can sort em out.

[kingu]

No matter how efficient the technological solution, the methods to defeat it are always going to be cheaper. Perhaps this device will fall prey to coffee grounds surrounding the explosives or some other such substance. It doesn't matter - in every case the solution to the problem is not dumping more money into detection methods, but instead putting our troops into those regions where these murderous wackos.

Kill those who declare war against us, destroy the schools that are the breeding grounds for the next generation of human powered scuds, and get serious about making it clear - either the 'civilized' nations renounce all forms of terrorism or they're making a defacto declaration of war that will be acted upon.

A bomb detector wouldn't have saved those people in London and certainly wouldn't have done anything for the people in the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. What would have done good would have been serious about eliminating this form of terrorism from the beginning.

[Unruly Human]

London blasts underscore the need for rethinking... immigration policy.

True. Instead of thinking of every possible way to passively protect ourselves I prefer just killing them before they get the chance to do anything else.

But that's just me....

[endthematrix]

London is the most surveilled city. They have cameras everywhere...in the name of preventing crime. It does nothing but record crime.

[Judge Roy]

London blasts underscore the need for rethinking... immigration policy

I agree God knew what he was doing when he seperated the races at the tower of Babel.

[coconutt2000]

Eheh, I've never seen a cat trained to do anything.

In fact, cats seem to effectively train their owners.

[angkor]

How can technology help prevent such attacks?

Further refinement of the 20mm M61 Vulcan Gatling gun plus an enhanced GBU-43/B (aka Massive Ordnance Air Blast) bomb - along with increased deployment of both - is the best way to kill jihadis and "prevent such attacks".

[John Filson]

I don't have anything against a particular race. It's certain deadly cultures that concern me.

[Force12]

www.pupsforpeace.org

[Grampa Dave]

It is past time for London to elect a new mayor and not one, who loves the mass murdering Jihadists:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1024351/posts

Consider the Source (Mayor of London calls Bush "greatest threat to life on planet")
Sacred Cow Burgers ^ | 11/18/2003 | Sacred Cow Burgers


Posted on 11/18/2003 12:28:18 PM PST by Prime Choice



So Mayor of London Livingstone says President Bush is the "greatest threat to life on the planet", huh?
Is it any wonder who puts these ridiculous ideas in his head?