New Homeland Security Laser Scanner Reads People At Molecular Level

cbs ^ | 7/11/12 | staff

[Nachum]

WASHINGTON (CBSDC) – The Department of Homeland Security will soon be using a laser at airports that can detect everything about you from over 160-feet away.

Gizmodo reports a scanner that could read people at the molecular level has been invented. This laser-based scanner – which can be used 164-feet away — could read everything from a person’s adrenaline levels, to traces of gun powder on a person’s clothes, to illegal substances — and it can all be done without a physical search. It also could be used on multiple people at a time, eliminating random searches at airports.

The laser-based scanner is expected to be used in airports as soon as 2013, Gizmodo reports.

The scanner is called the Picosecond Programmable Laser. The device works by blasting its target with lasers which vibrate molecules that are then read by the machine that determine what substances a person has been exposed to. This could be Semtex explosives to the bacon and egg sandwich they had for breakfast that morning.

[Nachum]

Oh boy.

[Diogenesis]

Good technology. But why are terrorists exempt again.

[mnehring]

More Philip K Dick predictions coming true.

[ClearCase_guy]

Initial testing did find some small problems.

[sten]

how would this be any good at finding a knife in my pocket?

does it penetrate ??

[Theoria]

'The device works by blasting its target with lasers which vibrate molecules'

One has the option of not going thru the TSA porno scanners, now they are gonna blast everyone with 'lasers'.

Shooting lasers into someone would still require permission.

I cannot try to microwave the general public and expect a form of arrest.

[Michigan Bowhunter]

expect to see this at a road side drunk driving lane in a state near you, soon.

[GreatRoad]

Sounds like another company John Kerry has stock in.

[huldah1776]

Of course they’ll use it on American civilians instead of trying it in Afghanistan to look for suicide bombers or IED planters.

THAT WOULD BE AGAINST THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT. Yeah, I’m yelling.

[Poison Pill]

If it can detect Semtex molecules it can also find cancer cells. There’s good here too. What Americans needs is to refuse to accept the Police State.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Sounds like an overhyped story....Don't MRI's work that way....and you have to move thru a tube to be scanned.....

Have they just built a super duper MRI unit?

Medical field should be a market.

[madison10]

Great. Advanced space technology in the hands of Neanderthals. This should work out well.

[Iron Munro]

"Looks like they're drunk with power, Jim."

[quickquiver]

Isn’t the CIA and DARPA some 20 years ahead of what is made public. Methinks this has been used already, without consent of course. I commented on this app. March 20 of this year.

[Marine_Uncle]

RE: "Have they just built a super duper MRI unit?"
No Ernest. Entirely in every way from a physics stand point different.
MRI works on the principle of pumping very selective high energy magnetic radiation through a body which "excite the protons within say a person's body within a small area, which then change energy levels (obviously with the electron shells playing into the process) which then radiate outward and are picked up by the MRI sensors and feed into very complex computer's to run their algorithms, and finally plot out on a display or other recording device, slice by slice as the MRI scans take place.

The process being described here, regarding the laser, is where an actual laser beam interacts with molecules on say one's skin, and then a specialized spectroscope (I'm clueless as of yet exactly what type would be incorporated, perhaps an array of say IR, and UV spectroscopy units, would then read sample molecules from the air, and analyze them. Just like you would pump a sample in a spectroscopic unit via. a hypodermic needle.
Short answer. To totally different types of diagnostic tools using totally different type of electronics and sensors.

[beethovenfan]

DEAR DHS: I fart in your general direction. Put that in your f’n laser!

[The_Reader_David]

I foresee a new sort of civil disobedience: sprinkling your clothes with trace amounts of hundreds of random chemicals. Kind of like all the kids in a high school stopping at the coffee shop for poppy seed bagels and poppy seed cake on the way to school when drug tests are announced: overload the system with false positives.

[lightman]

www.intriguing.com/mp/_sounds/hg/fart.wav

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Sounds like it could hurt.

[Tired of Taxes]

Somewhere in this news story is a futuristic dystopian novel just waiting to be written.